“If we work by heart, we will do what is right. Let us Remember the branding of DSWD: May Malasakit. That’s why we should be devoted in what we are doing to attain the success of this assessment.” Pasencia Ancheta, the Regional Focal Person of the National Household Targetting Unit of the Department of Social Welfare and Development Field Office 02 (DSWD-F02), said in the NHTU Training for the Assessment of On-Demand Application (ODA) Cases.

On June 19-21, 2017, the DSWD thru the NHTU conducted a three-day training for the field staff as a preparation for the upcoming continuation of the On-Demand Application in the region.

The Project

The National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR) also known as Listahanan is an information management system that identifies who and where the poor are.

Listahanan is aimed to establish an objective targeting system and to reduce the leakage or the inclusion of non-poor and under-coverage or the exclusion of the poor in social protection programs and services.

Since the government resources are limited, there is a need for a targeting system in order to evenhandedly allocate its resources and services to the poor.

Four Phases of the Project

Listahanan has four (4) Phases namely: Preparatory Phase, Data Collection and Analysis Phase, Validation and Finalization Phase, and the Report Generation Phase.

In the Preparatory Phase the areas to be assessed and their appropriate and corresponding data collection strategies are identified.

Home visits are conducted in the Data Collection and Analysis Phase to collect socio-economic information and basic information of family members thru the Household Assessment Form (HAF).

The initial list of poor families are posted for validation at the local level and by forming a Local Validation Committee (LVC) to act on complaints and appeals. This phase is called Validation and Finalization Phase. The official list of poor households is shared with data users to serve as their guide in selecting beneficiaries of their social protection programs.

In the Report Generation Phase the National and Regional Profiles of the Poor are generated based on data extracted from the database. Collect feedback from data users as to how they used the data for their social protection programs and resolve appeals or complaints on beneficiary selection.

Where are we now?

“Despite our imperfections, this imperfections only brings us closer to perfection.” Says John Gerald S. Pagaling, one of the resource speakers in the National Household Targeting Unit (NHTU) Training for the Assessment of On-Demand Application (ODA) Cases as encouragement for the trainees.

In the year 2015, the regular household assessment of Listahanan was conducted. As part of the Valitdation Phase, the initial list of poor households was then posted in all the barangays in the region and the Local Verification Committee (LVC) was organized to validate the appeals.

Another part of the Validation Phase is the On-Demand Application (ODA) or the assessment of the households who were not assessed during the regular household assessment. ODA assessment was conducted thereafter. But due to natural disasters, the NHTU was not able to finish the assessment.

At present, the NHTU is getting ready for the completion of ODA assessment. ### By: Margarette B. Galimba, Administrative Assistant III/Listahanan IO