Hundreds of villages benefit from ARMM’s anti-poverty program

Among the services delivered were health stations, provision of medicines and birthing supplies and equipment for its health component. Development of madaris curriculum, as a tool to combat violent extremism, as well as the construction of community learning centers for education, and study tour for teachers were also pursued.

ARMM-HELPS, the banner program of the region under the administration of Gov. Mujiv Hataman, also constructed flea markets and water systems, and supported livelihood cooperative development based on needs assessment for its livelihood objective.

To strengthen the regional government’s support to efficient governance, new village halls with police action centers were built, disaster preparedness and management training were promoted, rescue equipment and other supplies were distributed, and development of Barangay Development Plans and youth development support programs were given assistance.

“Everyone in the community should be involved in the whole process of making the projects – they are the ones who identify the projects. We want to prevent white elephant projects” said Anwar Upahm, ARMM-HELPS program manager.

“That is the reason why we do not implement projects that were not consulted. By helping facilitate their Barangay Development Plans, we ensure that concerns are discussed including economic, health, and educational needs,” he added.

The previous year’s efforts focused on 150 villages with program resources equally distributed among the region’s five provinces.  

Thus, the program has earmarked over P300 million for villagers who are beneficiaries in Lanao del Sur, which suffered from the Marawi crisis, and another P150 million for barangays in the other provinces namely Maguindanao, Basilan, Sulu, and Tawi-Tawi.

“Other than the fulfillment of being able to deliver by implementing all the projects, the best achievement (ARMM-HELPS) holds is that we were able to transform the system of ARMM’s project development from being top-down, to bottom-up,” Upahm said.

“We give importance to the participation of our different stakeholders in our communities. We are proud to say that in our outputs, the members of the communities are heard – from the planning process up to the implementation,” he said. (Bureau of Public Information)