The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) will  award the Gawad Listahanan to local government units (LGU) that have registered the most number of beneficiaries for their locally-funded programs based on the database of poor households of Listahanan.

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

It makes available to national government agencies, LGUs and other social protection stakeholders a comprehensive list of poor households as basis for beneficiary identification.

It may be recalled that Listahanan conducted a nationwide assessment covering 10.9 million households in 2009 which resulted to the identification of 5.2 million poor households in 2011.

“It has been almost four years since Listahanan started sharing its data to various social protection stakeholders. With a new database to be generated, it is timely for the project to give awards and recognition to those that have maximized the use of the first database,” DSWD Secretary Corazon Juliano-Soliman said.

To date, the project has 1,047 data users nationwide, 935 of which are LGUs.

Although the Department plans to expand award eligibility to Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) and its other stakeholders in the future, the first Gawad Listahanan will focus solely on LGUs – the Provincial, City and Municipal.

DSWD Field Offices are currently accepting applications for the Awards.

LGUs with active social protection projects and programs benefiting the Listahanan-identified poor are encouraged to enter the competition.

Eligible LGUs must also have a Sanggunian Bayan/Panglungsod resolution or ordinance supporting the institutionalization of the Listahanan as the official targeting mechanism for their social protection programs.

Winning LGUs will be invited to the Gawad Listahanan awarding ceremony, which will be held every January during the DSWD Anniversary. They will receive a plaque citing the highlights of their contribution and significance of their partnership with the Department and a cash incentive of P50,000.

Interested LGUs may download the contest guidelines and application form from the DSWDwebsite www.dswd.gov.ph.  Application form and its attachments must be submitted to the National Household Targeting Unit of the nearest DSWD Field Office on or before October 1, 2014.###