City-finalists deserve accolades too
By Jaime Paulo Mora

Four cities- Butuan, Tarlac, Tangub, and San Fernando, share the limelight for their innovations in local governance as finalists in the 2007 Galing Pook Awards.

In Butuan City, the Tuloy Aral Walang Sagabal program aims to mainstream the city’s special children population. Special children attend regular and special education classes in the city’s day care centers.It has already served 101 differently-abled children.

Cooperatives are ever vibrant in Tarlac City. With the Land Bank of the Philippines and the city’s Magsikap Tarlak! Program, 72 cooperatives have become beneficiaries of the financial and technical assistance the program has provided. This translated into 4,781 direct member-beneficiaries with a total capital base of Php 36.36 M, and mobilized savings of P8.27 M.

Clustering is one strategy Tangub City used to enhance the agricultural productivity of its upland barangays. Several strategies were used like breeding goats, multi-cropping, and the establishment of post harvest facilities. This benefited around 1,500 upland farmers.

Meanwhile in San Fernando City, La Union, many of the city’s basic services like health, social welfare, and environmental component have now been integrated to provide a more wholistic approach toimproving the city’s governance. The results speak for themselves – lower malnutrition rate in children aged 0-6 from 12.49% to 5.53%; increase in patients who are served in the city’s lying in clinics from 3,314 to 10,152; and 61.43% of the city’s residents are now segregating wastes.