The partnership between the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) and Metrobank continues in this year’s collaboration project dubbed as “Bag of Blessing (BoB)” in line with the celebration of the Chinese New Year.

The project is funded by the GT Foundation, a foundation established by business tycoon George Ty, owner of Metrobank, to give back and share blessings by giving food packs to the underprivileged Filipino families.

Metrobank has once again partnered with DSWD, through the Listahanan, a project under the DSWD that identifies who and where the poor are. For this year’s BoB, GT foundation has allotted a total of PHP 10 million worth of food packs for a total of 10,000 poor but non-Pantawid beneficiaries nationwide.

For Zamboanga City, 456 poor are initially selected as beneficiaries of the said project which will be conducted on January 28, 2017 at Sta. Maria Elementary School. These beneficiaries are among the identified poor families based on the Listahanan database.

In a meeting with Metrobank, Listahanan focals already verified qualified beneficiaries based on their database of poor. The following are the target number of beneficiaries per area/barangay: Sangali=34, Canelar=172, Mampang=48, Zone II=4, Zone III=6, Guiwan=153 and Talon-Talon=39.

DSWD-9 Regional Director, Atty. Araceli F. Solamillo, expressed her gratitude towards Metrobank for this noble project.

“We, in the DSWD as the agency that protects and promotes the welfare of the poor, are very glad about this partnership. We see that the government and the private sector are on the same page in terms of delivering services to the public. Not only that we provide prompt service but also a kind of service that really cares for the clientele,” says Atty. Solamillo.

Metrobank’s BoB project has started in 2011 and has been helping the poor since then.###

DSWD in a meeting with Metrobank last January 18