ILOILO CITY- HPFPI and PACSII Iloilo staff and volunteers convened a meeting last January 5-6 to evaluate the federation’s performance in undertaking its development thrusts for the past year. Also, during the meeting the federation and its technical support organization, set their priority activities as new challenges and opportunities welcomes year 2011.
The federation enumerated its pipeline activities for this year which include follow through activities to update community savings status of CLIFF, Housing Materials Assistance and ACHR upgrading communities including those who availed the Department of Social Welfare and Development’s 4Ps Program (Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program). Since community savings has been the backbone and the primary organizing tool of the federation, there is a need to capacitate the existing savings groups in terms of financial management as well as to revive those communities with inactive savings members. The federation has already identified key persons that will compose a team whose task is to validate and assist communities in updating their savings records and financial status. Follow-up orientation and hands-on training on community savings will be conducted for DSWD 4P’s beneficiairies who have not yet started their savings.
Monitoring of repayment status of communities who availed the upgrading loan from the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights (ACHR) is another task lined-up with the federation’s priority activities this 2010. It’s been three years already since the ACHR granted the seed capital to finance the 10 small-scale upgrading projects in selected pilot communities in Iloilo City. However, some factors like insufficiency of income sources of individual members, lack of receptivity of local government officials to the project and the skepticism of some members about the reliability of their leaders especially the designated loan collectors, have resulted to the unsustainability of loan repayment of upgrading communities. Difficulty of reorienting members of pilot communities about their loan repayment obligation poses another challenge to the Iloilo City Urban Poor Network which facilitates the community-led upgrading program. As a deliberate effort to address this problem, HPFPI will spearhead the regular loan repayment collection from upgrading communities every Thursday. Aside from regular upgrading loan collection, HPFP community leaders will also assist in recordings and bokeeping to keep track the community’s repayment collection.
These kind of initiatives being spearheaded by the federation to revive the savings and community-led upgrading program implementation is a good start for the year 2011. The federation also hopes to expand its membership on savings to its network communities including the non-affiliates. With proper and close monitoring of upgrading loan collection, the federation will have the opportunity to replicate the upgrading program to other communities who are also capable of demonstrating their own solutions to slum problems which they encounter.
