The Freeman
December 8, 2011
A government institution further expresses its love for the community by making upland homes more complete—and not by just helping finance the construction of houses.
Officials and members of the Home Mutual Development Fund (Pag-IBIG) and its employees’ labor association with Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP) and Sayaw Farmers Association turned over a spring box water system in barangay Tabunan, Cebu City on December 2.
Pag-IBIG Fund Cebu Branch Manager III Rio Teves, PBSP Visayas Executive Committee Member Rogelio Lim, PBSP Senior Program Officer Olivia Jabido and 48 Grade 6 pupils of Cantipla Integrated School attended the turnover.
“As a financial and housing institution, we always stress how we maximize our efforts of completing a home by not only providing affordable shelter to our less-privileged communities,” Teves stated during the turnover.
The Sayaw Farmers Association Spring Box Project is an offshoot of the PAG-IBIG Fund’s 143 Program, the institution’s flagship initiative aimed at funding long-term projects to adopted needy communities as its expression of corporate social responsibility.
This is the first time Pag-IBIG initiated a project under the program, led by its Cebu branch. This is also the first effort Pag-IBIG initiated in adopting a community to pour all its CSR efforts to make the impact of their projects more effective.
Funds used for the spring box project pegged at PHP 60,000.00 were sourced from the budget allocation of PHP 500.00 per employee of the Branch.
“We are trying to show a new face of Pag-IBIG by not only helping people through our jobs, but by sharing a bit of our own personal resources to help those that are in most need of basic services,” Teves added.
Barangay Tabunan in Cebu City is located within the Central Cebu Protected Landscape (CCPL), a 27000-hectare expanse composed of five watershed and protected areas. It is Cebu’s major source of potable water as well as home to a number of native and endemic plant and animal species. To protect the potent resources found in CCPL, massive reforestation efforts and water system installations organized by groups such as PBSP had been going on for years, where community-based groups are tapped to be its partners.
“PBSP implements these water projects for various purposes. First, water is a basic human need and it is every household’s right to have access to safe drinking water. Second, water is integrated in our education projects because sanitation and hygiene is both a need and a discipline that must be understood by our young ones. Third, water fuels agriculture, thus, appropriate water systems are needed by communities to generate good income from their crops. Fourth, water may also be a good enterprise and incomes may be derived from its good management. And finally, water is a resource that must be sustained through simple technologies and holistic measures,” Lim stated.
The spring box will collect water from a spring two kilometers away from the facility and store the water safe from contamination. The facility, located just beside the Trans-Central Highway, will benefit more than 30 households in sitio Sayaw, Tabunan, Cebu City.
Aside from the turnover, the pupils also attended a read-along session and received Jollibee food packs, school supplies, toys and snacks from the Pag-IBIG Fund employees.
“Now that these residents were given access to potable water with the help of Pag-IBIG, our next step is to ensure that they do not waste this resource, and one of the best ways to address this is to educate the younger people the importance of saving water through read-along sessions like this,” Jabido said.
“I’m happy they (PBSP and PAG-IBIG) invited us here for the turnover and read-along session. We’re not only excited to use the spring box; we also learned a lot about the importance of water and our place,” Rodrigo Tecson, one of the pupils, shared.
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