This report assesses the KALAHI-CIDSS community-driven development project in the Philippines to determine its contribution toward improved service delivery and governance in the beneficiary communities. KALAHI-CIDSS was found to be especially effective in facilitating broad-based participation of community residents, addressing local priorities and delivering basic services to the intended beneficiaries, providing community residents with valuable experience, and creating space for local government officials to collaborate with community residents in subproject management. The project created positive effects on the income and non-income dimensions of poverty. It is valued highly by recipient communities, participating local governments, and development partners.

This guidebook helps ensure that community training investments are optimized and yield the desired results. It provides learning facilitators with guidelines and tools for carrying out various phases of the training management cycle, including analysis, design, development, execution, monitoring, and evaluation. The guidebook was developed as part of the Department of Social Welfare and Development's Kapit-Bisig Laban sa Kahirapan---Comprehensive and Integrated Delivery of Social Services National Community-Driven Development Program, which conducts training to plan for and participate in community change initiatives in the Philippines.

Knowledge is critical in addressing the complex challenges of development and poverty reduction faced by the Philippines. This compendium discusses the progress and achievements of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in line with The Philippines Country Knowledge Strategy and Plan, 2012–2017 and presents various knowledge products and services focusing on the country. As a development and knowledge-based institution, ADB’s strategic directions to support the knowledge needs of the Philippines focuses on (i) sustainable and climate- and disaster-resilient infrastructure; (ii) local economic development, governance, and regional cooperation; (iii) social innovations; and (v) gender equality.

This publication examines the Kapit-Bisig Laban sa Kahirapan---Comprehensive and Integrated Delivery of Social Services National Community-Driven Development Program, which promotes women's participation and empowerment in the Philippines. The challenges and constraints observed in the program serve as lessons to enhance gender mainstreaming initiatives in community-driven development projects and programs.

This book describes challenges in the policy and practices of the various water sectors in the Philippines that have led to water conflicts. Such conflicts arise in the nature of rural-urban competition, trans-administrative boundary issues, and inconsistencies between customary and state rules, and even within state rules. Using inter-, multi- and trans-disciplinary approaches, and analysing from various scales - community, local and national governments - the book discusses policies and strategies needed towards achieving water security especially for the poor. Reflective of the complex and urgent water policy and governance issues in many developing countries, the book offers valuable lessons and insights to policy makers, water sector managers, planners and regulators as well as to academics, researchers and students.

Against the backdrop of the global financial crisis and rising food, fuel, and commodity prices, addressing poverty and inequality in the Philippines remains a challenge. The proportion of households living below the official poverty line has declined slowly and unevenly in the past four decades, and poverty reduction has been much slower than in neighboring countries such as the People's Republic of China, Indonesia, Thailand, and Viet Nam. Economic growth has gone through boom and bust cycles, and recent episodes of moderate economic expansion have had limited impact on the poor. Great inequality across income brackets, regions, and sectors, as well as unmanaged population growth, are considered some of the key factors constraining poverty reduction efforts. This publication analyzes the causes of poverty and recommends ways to accelerate poverty reduction and achieve more inclusive growth. it also provides an overview of current government responses, strategies, and achievements in the fight against poverty and identifies and prioritizes future needs and interventions. The analysis is based on current literature and the latest available data, including the 2006 Family Income and Expenditure Survey.

How are meta-narratives of development entangled in people’s identities and life trajectories? How do they inhabit people’s histories, their understandings of their place in the world, and their dreams for the future? The idea of development has been deconstructed and scrutinized as a “Western” metaphor ordering global difference and as a banner under which diverse schemes for societal improvement find legitimacy and common purpose. But how is development assimilated into the worldviews of development’s subjects? How does it reshape identities and in what ways is it reshaped in the process? Drawing on a decade of ethnographic research on the Philippine island of Siquijor, In Pursuit of Progress explores myths, meanings, and practices of development and its counterparts, progress and modernization. It does so not only by considering development as planned, community-wide interventions aimed at society-wide improvements in living standards, but by recognizing that, as a cognitive tool for organizing relationships between people, development is personal. For Siquijodnon, development, or kalamboan, is also a process of self-transformation concerning changes in knowledge, body, roles, and cultural orientation. Emblems as diverse as skin color, Christianity, infant formula, and infrastructure make statements about development on Siquijor. Kalamboan is bound up with social mobility, consumption, and status, but so too is it imbued with ideals of the “simple life,” a life of austerity and attention to social relationships, and with other assumptions about how people should live. Author Hannah Bulloch analyzes development not only as a prescription for material aspiration but also for moral endeavor. In Pursuit of Progress, offers rich, ethnographic insights into contemporary Visayan culture, engaging with questions of enduring significance in Philippines studies, including livelihood change, “colonial mentality,” everyday politics, and moral economy. It will contribute to debates in anthropology, sociology, and development studies regarding the ways in which discourses of development act upon local and global power relations.