By Sammy F. Martin
MANILA, Aug. 15 (PNA) — The Bottom-up Budgeting (BuB) of the national government drove 26 individuals to fight poverty by making them busy while earning for their livelihood in Valenzuela City.
The 26-man group secured Php260,000, which was downloaded from the budget of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), through the Self-Employment Assistance-Kaunlaran, or SEA-K Program – a capacity building program aims to enhance the socio-economic families through the organization of community-based associations for entrepreneurial development.
The local government of Valenzuela becomes interested to initiate a project under the BuB program by teaching beneficiaries on how to make tofu [tokwa].
Since Mayor Rex Gatchalian becomes supportive of the project, his government invested Php1.3 million to finance the building of tofu-making project, including equipment needed to be used by its workers.
Annabel Pincas, focal person for livelihood of the City Social Worker Development Office of Valenzuela City, told newsmen that they encourage recipients of the project to learn the self-quality control, making their produced product the cleanest in order to compete in the market.
“We are targeting to finish the building by early or mid-September because the initial produced of 900 pieces a day will be used in the feeding program of the local government to feed school children in the city,” Pincas said.
This infrastructure is five times bigger than the currently-rented makeshift production rooms completed with different and bigger areas needed for expansion in production. The construction is now on-going and is expected to be used by September of 2015 where the actual production will take place.
In the manpower section, the beneficiaries undergone series of various capacity-building activities for skills enhancement. They coordinated different sectors to be their partners in the said activities such as Manila and Marikina LGUs and CDO Foodsphere Inc.
BuB is a type of budgeting that attempts to determine the underlying costs for each individual department or segment of an organization and then total up each department. This type of budgeting works in contrast to top down budgeting.
This process starts out small by looking at the individual components and costs of projects. In order to do this type of budgeting, you will need to start out by identifying all of the projects that you plan on completing as a business.
Once you identify the project, you need to figure out what steps you will be taking to complete that project. At that point, you have to figure out the costs for each step of the project and total them up.
After you have come up with a realistic cost estimate of each project, you need to total up all the projects together. During this process, you need to work your way up from one level to the next.
The program started in 2013 when the Land Local Poverty Reduction Action Team (LPRAT) in Valenzuela City was made.
This team of LPRAT identified feasible programs and projects needed by the community which will then be part of the BuB lists of programs and projects.
The production project was proposed because of its high potential in the market as there is no existing company in Valenzuela that produce tofu.
The manpower for the production where most women (mothers) beneficiary of Pantawid program, and Informal Settler Families (ISF) from the danger zones of Tullahan River and were victims of Typhoon Ondoy.
Furthermore, Pincas said the small cottage industry will be fully monitored by the local government of Valenzuela and make the lives of recipients bubbly in the near future because the city government will be the agent to look for bigger market to sustain tofu making activity. (PNA)