Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Secretary Judy M. Taguiwalo underscored the importance of continuously providing learning opportunities to DSWD employees in order to improve the quality of social services it provides to poor Filipinos.

“In order to deliver more effective social services to those in need, the DSWD continues to provide different trainings and courses to its employees so they can enhance their skills, enable them to serve the people in communities better,” Sec. Taguiwalo said in her message during the Leadership for Convergence Program (LCP) Colloquium of DSWD-Field Office (FO) VI held on Tuesday in Iloilo City.

The event also served as the commencement exercises of FO participants, who completed the LCP leadership training modules conducted in collaboration with the University of the Philippines (UP)-Visayas.

Some 101 members of City and Municipal Action Teams (C/MATs) of DSWD-FO VI were conferred their Certificate of Completion after finishing the one-year leadership course and effectively implementing their Social Welfare and Development Indicator (SWDI)-based Scoreboard for their respective cities and municipalities.

“Through the LCP, we are bringing our employees together to increase their knowledge and improve their skills, and then casting them again in the communities they serve. The program also helps form DSWD personnel who are dynamic and more advanced in their field,” Sec. Taguiwalo said.

Under the LCP, members of the C/MATs were able to seek support from internal and external partners for implementing responsive social welfare and development services to address gaps in their assigned cities and municipalities.

Using the SWDI-based scoreboard, the participants confronted the issues affecting the everyday life of the beneficiaries of the government’s flagship poverty-alleviation program, the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps).

The members of the C/MATs serve as frontliners in delivering the programs and services of the Department for the poor, including the 4Ps, Sustainable Livelihood Program (SLP), and Kapit-Bisig Laban sa Kahirapan-Comprehensive Integrated Delivery of Social Services (Kalahi-CIDSS), among others.

Other than providing leadership trainings to DSWD employees, Sec. Taguiwalo also stressed her plans to launch an initiative that will expose the Department’s personnel to the situation in different regions so they will have a ‘wider view of things.

“What I want to do is an initiative from the national level; that we, from the central office, bring in people to different regions from time to time to exchange information so that our knowledge is not limited to one region only. In each region, there is a different experience. With this initiative, we will have a wider perspective. If we are confined only to an office or a particular community, we might have a limited view of things,” Sec. Taguiwalo explained.

The colloquium served as a venue for the graduates to let their leadership stories during the implementation of social welfare and development services in their communities be heard by different stakeholders for better understanding of the SWDI issues, and for possible provision of support. ###