The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) continues to partner with various government agencies to help Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) beneficiaries gain access to other government programs, an agency official said on Tuesday.
“Poverty alleviation is not the sole responsibility of one government agency, it must be a whole-of-nation approach. With this, the 4Ps continues its partnership with other government agencies to help its grantees avail of programs and services that are not within the mandate of the DSWD,” Assistant Secretary Irene Dumlao said in a news release.
Among the partners of the program is the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) which provided tertiary educational support to 275,881 monitored children through the Unified Student Financial Assistance System for Tertiary Education (UniFAST).
CHED’s UniFAST program provides opportunities to 4Ps households with children who are determined to pursue college education.
“For 4Ps children-beneficiaries, finishing a college degree provides an opportunity for them to have better employment that will help improve their lives and prevent them from sliding back to poverty,” Dumlao said.
The 4Ps has also partnered with the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) that provide skills training to 5,152 beneficiaries with the assistance of the DSWD’s Sustainable Livelihood Program (SLP).
Dumlao said the 4Ps partnership with the Department of Education (DepEd) is also worth noting, as DepEd was able to hire 3,685 teachers who were former grantees of the program.
Dumlao added some 1,320 4Ps beneficiaries acquired livelihood assistance from the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), and 39,121 grantees received ‘Science, Technology, and Innovation interventions’ from the Department of Science and Technology (DOST).
In terms of agriculture-related interventions, a total of 152,944 beneficiaries gained various assistance from the Department of Agriculture (DA), while some 3,246 grantees were endorsed to the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) for their programs and services.
In 2024, Dumlao said the DSWD 4Ps National Program Management Office (NPMO) also collaborated with the Social Security System (SSS) for the implementation of the AlkanSSSya Program to help grantees avail of low-cost social insurance.
Launched in 2008 and institutionalized by Republic Act (RA) 11310 in 2019, the 4Ps is the national poverty reduction strategy and human capital investment program that provides conditional cash transfer to poor households for a maximum period of seven years to improve their children’s health, nutrition, and education. (PNA)