Poverty has always been a problem that the country tries to resolve. Many want to cure this age-old problem! But are you aware of the different initiatives that our government is doing to resolve it? Our goal in this blog is to introduce you to the Sustainable Livelihood Program, an initiative of the Department of Social Welfare and Development in solving this gripping social issue. 

 A Briefer on Poverty

Before anything else, it would be proper to introduce you to the definition of poverty and its forms. Poverty, as defined by a well-known dictionary, is “the state of one who lacks a usual or socially acceptable amount of money or material possessions.”

This definition only gives us an idea of what it is, but what “qualifications” do a person or a family has to have before he or she can be categorized as living in poverty? According to the data published by the Philippine Statistics Authority in the first semester of 2018,  a family composed of five members needs at least 7,337 Php per month for them to meet their basic food needs. But if the non-food needs are also to be accounted for, a family of the same number of members should meet an income of 10,481 Php or more. Other than this, the Social Work professionals also uses the levels of poverty to categorize the poor and better help them. 

Levels of Poverty 

The four levels of poverty are: the  Vulnerable poor, subsistence poor, Wage-earning poor, Entrepreneurial Poor. The vulnerable poor are families that do not have the resources enough to meet their daily needs. The sustainable poor are families that live on a day to day basis. Meaning, what they earn for a day, they use for their needs on that same day. Hardly will they be able to save something for the future, or even for the next day. 

The other two “better” levels of poverty are the wage-earning and the entrepreneurial. The wage-earning poor are people who are physically-able to work and earn a living for themselves and for their families, but are still unable to meet their needs. A notch higher to that are the Entrepreneurial poor, or those that have employ their abilities to run a small business. 

There must therefore be ways by which the people living in these situations be assisted and lifted up. Programs are needed to help families living in poverty to rise up and be able to cross the poverty thresholds, both food and non-food.  SLP or the Sustainable Livelihood Program is one of the many poverty-alleviation program that is employed by the government to help reach this goal of poverty alleviation. 

Sustainable Livelihood Program

The program, as described by DSWD, is  “a community based capacity building program that provides livelihood prospects and other economic opportunities to improve the well-being of vulnerable sectors.”

They have a motto of  “Sibol Kakayahan, Sibol Kabuhayan”. This means that agency believes that the people can overcome the  hindrances to their improved well-being by capacitating them. This shows that the program has a strength’s based perspective - a lens widely used in the Social Work practice that views people with eyes that see the valuable assets that they have such as their character, knowledge, talents, skills and abilities. 

Check out our infographic below for more details on how the Sustainable Livelihoods are fleshed out by DSWD.

References:

Gov’t allots PhP2.3 Billion for Sustainable Livelihood Program. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.dbm.gov.ph/index.php/secretary-s-corner/press-releases/list-of-press-releases/1256-gov-t-allots-php2-3-billion-for-sustainable-livelihood-program

Proportion of Poor Filipinos registered at 21.0 percent in the First Semester of 2018. Retrieved from http://rsso10.psa.gov.ph/article/poverty-first-semester-2018

Sino Cruz, Irene R. (2019). DSWD SLP changing lives of its beneficiaries. Cebu Daily News Inquirer.net. Retrieved from https://cebudailynews.inquirer.net/226710/dswd-slp-changing-lives-of-its-beneficiaries

Sustainable Livelihood Program. (n.d). Retrieved from https://livelihood.dswd.gov.ph/

Sustainable Livelihood Program (SLP) of Philippines: Linking Cash Transfer to Sustainable Livelihood Development. (2016). Retrieved from https://socialprotection.org/sustainable-livelihood-program-slp-philippines-linking-cash-transfer-sustainable-livelihood