A total of 7,108 households (HHs) in Western Visayas have graduated from the government’s Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) as of June 21, 2021.

Belen Gebusion, Pantawid Division chief of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) in Western Visayas, in an interview Wednesday, June 23, said they have targeted 10,393 potential graduates for the first batch.

The result of their assessment showed that 7,108 HHs no longer have children 0 to 18 years old or have graduated from the Senior High School (SHS); 2,276 were re-activated; and 1, 009 are still for validation.

Those that exited came from Aklan with 784 households; Antique, 818; Capiz, 1,020; Guimaras, 174; Iloilo, 1,718, and Negros Occidental with 2,594 households.

“These are the households that have completed the process with the transition. We were able to endorse them to our local government units for after-care support,” she said.

The graduates, she said, have already undergone the full process of the Kilos Unlad Framework, which is a social case management strategy to guide households to achieve improved well-being, step out of poverty and generate cooperation among family members.

Not all of the households are considered as within the self-sufficient level (economically and socially) based on the Social Welfare Development Indicator (SWDI).

“We know that they are not that stable. Their source of income, which is very crucial in maintaining the status of our beneficiaries, due to the pandemic was also affected,” she added.

Gebusion said that households who are no longer eligible for the program are at the stage when their children are into college, thus it is already part of the after-care of the LGU.

Likewise, since the sustainable livelihood program of the DSWD could not also accommodate the households, then they rely on the interventions that will be extended by the LGU.

Nonetheless, she said since 2010, she has been a witness to how beneficiaries have transformed.

“The application of the knowledge that they learned out of the monthly learning session that we have, we can already see that in respective households,” Gebusion said.PNA