The Presidential Commission on Urban Poor on Monday vowed to pursue programs to help the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex (LGBTQI) community, particularly the poor ones, find jobs in Davao City.
Alvin Feliciano, PCUP chairperson, and chief executive officer, recently initiated a three-day training for sustainable livelihood program through the assistance of the Department of Social Welfare and Development.
PCUP assisted several organizations of LGBT-Davao City Coalition to access livelihood program in order to create socio-economic opportunities for their members.
During the training, the DSWD oriented the beneficiaries on the fundamentals of business management, such as financial management, resource mobilization, conflict management, and leadership.
According to Feliciano, each qualified beneficiary will receive P 15,000 in financial assistance from the DSWD after going through the mandatory training.
“We initiated this kind of program with the DSWD to capacitate and identify [LGBT] leaders who can sustain the program, the marginalized sector and the minority groups like them can also be given assistance from the government,” PCUP Commissioner Norman Baloro said.
The commission has created a convergence strategy with several government agencies to offer avenues for economic, social and productivity development of the urban poor LGBTQI.
Last year, PCUP issued a resolution—he Kabahagi Kabahaghari—to provide social inclusion of the urban poor LGBT community in policy reform agenda and decision-making for human development.
Balaoro promised to create more effective policy reforms to alleviate poverty in urban poor areas for all sectors of society.
He gave the assurance to support the needs of urban poor, “especially those who are oppressed, depressed and disadvantaged minority groups.”