Department of Social Welfare and Development Field Office II headed by Regional Director Violeta A. Cruz formally launched LISTAHANAN Talaan ng Pamilyang Nangangailangan as the new face of National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR) on November 15, 2013 at Patio Lorenzo, Tuguegarao City.

The launching was participated by different National Government Agencies (NGAs), Media and Academe.

In her message, Regional Director Violeta A. Cruz emphasized that the former project name “National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction” was too long, and even the acronym NHTS-PR is still too long to recall.

“And because of this, people had difficulty remembering and recalling the project name and associating it with the conduct of the household assessment and other related activities. These days are now over because we now have a new brand name – the LISTAHANAN – which is shorter and, therefore, more catchy and more meaningful,” Dir. Cruz added.

Meanwhile, Ms. Delia S. Sto. Tomas, Deputy Regional Project Manager of LISTAHANAN thanked the efforts of the various partner agencies, media and academe in attending said momentous activity.

“Some of you are already our partners and for others, we are encouraging you to become our data users through forging a Memorandum of Agreement with us,” Ms. Sto. Tomas stressed.

During the launching, Dir. Cruz also mentioned of the upcoming second round of household assessment next year to update the LISTAHANAN database. Relative to this, she also stressed that screening for the field staff were already done for the province of Cagayan, Nueva Vizcaya, Quirino and part of Isabela.

Moreover, Mr. Rey Tuddao of Commission on Higher Education (CHED) expressed his appreciation for LISTAHANAN saying that, it is a commendable undertaking of the DSWD.

“We are one of the data users, because of the LISTAHANAN database we were able to identify the poorest among the poor and deserving beneficiaries, with this we are going to ask and use again the said database in order for us to identify also the non-poor for our projects next year.” Ms. Angelica Obordo of Department of Health (DOH) said.

As of today, 19 national government agencies, 5 civil society organizations, 4 academe and 82 Local Government Units are using the Listahanan data as their reference in identifying potential beneficiaries of social protection programs and services.

Listahanan is an information management system that identifies who and where the poor are nationwide. It reduces leakage or inclusion of the non-poor and under-coverage or exclusion of the poor in social protection services; and lessens implementation cost of social protection programs and services by saving resources intended for targeting.