Naga LGU provides school supplies to 2,475 kids

By Jason B. Neola

Despite the crisis brought about by Covid-19, the celebration of the 28th National Family Week in the city has made 2,475 Sanggawadan school children happy.

This, after the Naga City Social Welfare and Development Office (CSWDO) distributed to them school supplies like art materials, pencils, and pad papers that they can be used during online classes.

Annabel Vargas, CSWDO chief, said that aside from the supplies, the kids, whose families are members of the city government’s Sanggawadan Program, were also given 10 kilos of rice. Each of them will receive again 30 kilos more before the end of September, this year.

Before their admission to the Sanggawadan program, the children worked as watch-your-car boys, newsboys, peddlers of homemade meryendas and kakanin, store attendants and helpers at ukay-ukay (hand-me-down) stores, to help augment their families’ income, which also deprived them of precious time to spend for studies and stay in school.

The program provides indigent families with rice subsidies in exchange for sending their children to school to complete at least their elementary and secondary education. The amount saved for rice may be expended for their children’s transportation and daily allowance.

Included in the list of Sanggawadan children are sons and daughters of solo parents.

The program is an extension of the AusAID State and Urban Working Children Program (SUWCP) that the city government continues to implement even after the said international agency terminated the program 12 years ago.

Among the 25 cities in the country where SUWCP had been implemented, only the city of Naga decided to sustain its implementation despite the cessation of financial and material assistance originally extended by the AusAid.