By Cyrus A. Natividad

The CPU Knowledge for Development Center (KDC) – Henry Luce III Library celebrated the “End Poverty Day” with a video conference connected to the World Bank on October 17, 2019. The conference was attended by local government economic representatives, CPU officials, and other agencies. The “End Poverty Day” is a segment of an international economic forum, where annual outputs of 4P’s Pantawid Pamilya in the Philippines are assessed and discussed.

On live stream from its headquarters in Manila, Acting Country Director, Souleymane Coulibaly pointed out one of the reasons why many low-income families remained poor. Somehow, he said, “most of these families were lifted up during the early tranches of the Conditional Cash Transfers (CCT), but returned to being poor because of the impact of many typhoons that hit the country. Many areas were recipients of the Pantawid Pamilya program of the government.”

This year’s conference included a brief presentation of the Philippine’s Poverty and Equity, by Sharon Faye Piza, a Philippine Economist. The 2017 Assessment of the Pantawid Pamilya was presented by Pablo Acosta, Lead author and Human Development leader for Brazil.

The case of typhoons in the Philippines was included in the presentation of Kawasoe Yasuhiro, a World Bank Representative. The round of questions from the different Universities in the country as well as the government were shown live on the video conference. Central Philippine University was among the Universities who asked questions.

Engr. Dimpna Castigador coordinated the video conference with the World Bank. She was assisted by KDC Coordinator Prof. Ana Mae Cantel.