Discover Maribojoc Bohol Philippines

The city’s 180 barangays today received some P240,000 worth of carpentry tools and other equipment from the Rotary Club (RC) of Iloilo City and its sister clubs from Metro Manila.

RC-Iloilo City president Joe Totenco said the equipment aimed to aid them in the rehabilitation and reconstruction works after Typhoon Frank.

The set of equipment include submersible pump, bolo, hammer, saw, crew bar, nylon rope, grass cutter, rake, lawn mower, wheel borrow, among others.

Totenco said each barangay was given a set of tools depending on their request that was submitted to Barangay Captain Roberto Divinagracia, president of the Association of Barangay Captains at the City Proper district.

Barangays in Lapuz district received P14,540 worth of equipment; Mandurriao, P24,390; Arevalo, P17,080; Lapaz, P33,500; Molo, P31,500; Jaro, P48,320 and City Proper, P70,594.

Totenco said barangay residents can coordinate with their barangay captains if they want to borrow some of the equipment.

Eight municipalities from Iloilo and Capiz provinces have qualified for the Makamasang Tugon program, a sequel of the Kapitbisig Laban sa Kahirapan: Comprehensive and Integrated Delivery of Social Services (KALAHI: CIDSS) project of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD).

The qualified municipalities were chosen from the 21 KALAHI: CIDSS recipient local government units (LGUs) all over the region.

The Makamasang Tugon will serve as incentive to municipalities where the sub-projects of the KALAHI: CIDSS were already completed, properly implemented and have served its purpose of empowering the community.

The municipalities include Carles, Concepcion, San Dionisio, Ajuy, Barotac Viejo, Maasin and Janiuay, all in Iloilo province and Jamindan in Capiz

“All the barangays within that municipalities is our target,” DSWD assistant regional director Joel Galicia said.

Each barangay is entitled to a P500,000 budget higher than the P300,000 fund that was provided to recipient barangays under the KALAHI: CIDSS cycle.

The qualified LGUs have already come out with their own strategy on how to implement the project based on the community empowerment cycle of the KALAHI: CIDSS, Galicia said.

“This is a pilot-test project. After the one-year implementation, we will document the process of each municipality together with the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) and the World Bank and the result will be finalized and manualized to be adopted by other LGUs later on,” he explained.

Every child deserves quality education, the Children’s Hour Philippines Inc. (CHPI) donated a seed money of P150,000 to the Philippine National Red Cross (PNRC).

CHPI chairman Ambassador Bienvenido Tan Jr. handed over the check donation to PNRC Governor Rosa Rosal, who represented PNRC chairman Sen. Richard J. Gordon.

The P150,000 donation of Children’s Hour will go to the PNRC special project called “Give Blood, Save a Child”, which is patterned after the Blood Samaritan Project (BSP).

The BSP intends to pilot-test it for charity patients who cannot afford the cost of blood transfusion from October to December 2008.

Project site is the Philippine General Hospital (PGH), Philippine Children’s Medical Center, and National Children’s Hospital (NCH). The donation will benefit more than 100 children from all over the country.

Rosal said the PNRC stands by the belief of providing quality health and education care by providing safe and quality blood to patients needing transfusion regardless of status in life.

“Blood itself is free but there is minimal expense in collecting and processing one unit of safe and quality whole blood, which is P1,500 at the PNRC blood centers. Records show that in most cases, patients would need more than one unit of blood,” she said.

The “Give Blood, Save a Child” program offers an organized system of tapping good Samaritans to help alleviate human suffering by subsidizing the cost of blood processing, in part or in whole.