MANILA, April 22 (PIA) — The Department of Social Welfare and Development – Mimaropa urges stakeholders to enter into a memorandum of agreement (MOA) on data sharing and use of Listahanan’s data on poor households to identify beneficiaries of their social protection programs.

Data Generation and Sharing is the last phase of DSWD’s Listahanan or the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR) project cycle where data is made available to various social protection stakeholders such as national government agencies (NGAs), non-government organizations (NGOs), peoples organizations (POs) and local government units (LGUs) to help them plan for programs such as labor market interventions and social insurance, among others.

Regional Project Manager and DWSD Mimaropa Regional Director Wilma D. Naviamos said, “This year we are targeting 25 more stakeholders and we will focus on advocacy campaigns to attract more partner agencies and LGUs to enter into data sharing agreement with the department”.

As of December 2012, DSWD IV- B has a total of 21 MOA with LGUs and NGAs. The municipalities of Gasan in Marinduque and Sta. Maria, Romblon have recently signed a MOA in support of the implementation of the Listahanan project.

The DSWD shares data depending on the need of the data users. NGAs are mandated by Executive Order No. 867, signed by Former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in 2010, to adopt Listahanan as reference for identifying potential beneficiaries for their social protection programs.

Listahanan is an information management that identifies ‘who and where the poor are’ nationwide. Listahanan was able to assess 513,759 households across the five provinces of MIMAROPA with 242, 633 identified poor households or equivalent to 1, 359, 280 poor individuals. (DSWD/LBR/Jason Eco Oliverio/PIA4B)