Republic of the Philippines
Department of Agrarian Reform
PBD MES & Library
CLAAP was born through the initiatives of two (2) line departments: the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) and Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR).
In December 2017, DAR and DSWD entered into a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) to formalize this joint undertaking. As a result of the agreement, the former granted a Php1 Billion fund to the former to finance the implementation of the project. In response, DAR allocated a total amount of Php185 Million (direct and attribution costs) as counterpart fund to finance activities akin to the project implementation.
The CLAAP fosters complementation between DSWD’s Sustainable Livelihood Program (SLP) with the Agrarian Reform Community (ARC) development framework of DAR. The project aims towards increasing the capacity of selected poor and near-poor ARBs/Small Farm Holders (SFH) including farmworkers to engage into micro-enterprises through the provision of seed capital assistance and enable them to operate and manage their existing and new enterprises.
CLAAP has four (4) project components: 1) Social Preparation, 2) Technical Capacity Development (TCD), 3) Seed Capital Assistance (SCA), and 4) Project Supervision, Management, Monitoring and Evaluation (PSMME).
The project would be implemented for two years from FY 2018 to FY 2019. However, technically the project started in 2018 but preparatory activities such as cross-matching of beneficiaries with DSWD’s National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTSPR) which was completed in November 2018 and hiring of project staff nationwide in the 3rd quarter of the same year. The Joint Memorandum Circular (JMC), Series of 2018 as Implementing Guidelines was approved in June 2018. Project Orientations were conducted on the last quarter of 2018. Likewise, the fund was released on 5 October 2018 from Bureau of Treasury (BTR) to DAR amounting to PhP43,457,745.00 for the conduct of project preparatory activities and initial activities on social preparations. Hence, it was in FY 2019 that the project implementation kicked-off focusing on core activities such as social preparation, TCD and SCA implementations.
PROJECT OBJECTIVE
The Fiscal Year 2020 was the most challenging implementation year for CLAAP because of the outbreak and surge of Covid-19 Virus that hampered the speedy implementation of the three major activities: procurement of goods and services, conduct of skills training, and delivery of goods and services. Another major setback for the procurement was the lack of local suppliers as a result of local restrictions imposed by Local Government Units (LGUs). Notwithstanding these challenges, the DAR Field Offices were able to implement the remaining 650 projects (43.7%) for 2020. These projects benefitted a total of 15,804 beneficiaries.
Learning its lessons from the 2019 project implementation, the funds for FY 2020 projects were downloaded as early as August 2020. The major commitments of CLAAP for 2020 revolve around the following:
1) continuing revalidation of the socio-demographic and project profiles, 2) sustained monitoring of the 2019 projects especially the gross sales performance, and
3) implementation of the 2020 projects.
With the context of improving the lives of the beneficiaries, CLAAP’s long-term goal is to improve the household income of the beneficiaries by at least 15% after five years of project operation.
In order to attain this goal, the CLAAP aims to achieve four (4) project outputs:
1) 36,000 beneficiaries trained in livelihood activities of which 30% are women,
2) 36,000 beneficiaries with established enterprises or livelihood projects of which 30% are women,
3) 1,200 enterprises established and sustainably operationalized, and
4) 1,200 CLAAP clusters with strengthened organizational and management skills.