The Samahan ng Nagkakaisang Pamilyang Pantawid (SNPP or Association of the United 4Ps Families) has undertook several significant activities in past four years to further strengthen their ability to organize their communities, engage on policy issues and advocacies revolving around CCT program-related issues as a springboard for civic engagement. ANSA-EAP thru NED’s support continues to handhold the SNPP in their efforts to expand membership and engagement in other regions of the country. The aim is to build significant force in speaking out on other democracy challenges as they attempt to hold government accountable for policies and programs that undermine democratic governance and institutions.
After the victorious lobbying for the institutionalization of the major anti-poverty of the national government which is the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) or the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps), SNPP has also maximized the space of democratic participation that was provided by them by actively participating in the final crafting of the Implementation Rules and Regulations (IRR) of CCT Law and closely monitored the implementation of the CTT program, the Social Amelioration Program related to Covid-19 and the blended modality of the education program of the government.
SNPP has continued its membership expansion activity to other cities of Metro Manila and other provinces nationwide with total members of 152,212. This organization serves as the platform in advancing their advocacy on human rights, democratic participation, and demanding transparency from the government’s implementation of social protection program.
The ongoing pandemic has posed so many difficulties to the organization in pursuing its planned advocacies, capacity building and organizational development because of mobility and safety measures on health and security notwithstanding the difficulty on food access. Indeed, SNPP community leaders along with the people especially from the urban community, have felt the discontentment with the government response and interventions to Covid-19, especially the Omicron Variant pandemic on health and education; fear for civil and human rights violation, the red tagging brought about the implementation of the anti-terror bill, emergency power act and anxious of the effect for the suppression of press freedom and democracy.
Despite the mounting challenges and numerous societal problems with the assistance of the project thru ANSA and supported by NED and the established partnership with network organizations, SNPP continued to implement its organizational programs and activities.
The SNPP core leaders and second liners continued to widen the organization’s membership. The Covid- 19 IATF quarantine guidelines restrict the movement of the community to conduct community gatherings and house visits though. Nevertheless, the conduct of organizational membership continued through online meeting. For this reporting period particularly for the month of April to June alone, 336 individuals were added, most of them are from the Metro Manila, Southern and Northern Luzon, Western and Eastern Visayas and Northern and BARMM in Mindanao.
The conduct of town hall meetings or pulong bahay aims to heighten awareness in the community on human rights, freedom of speech and defending civil and democratic rights. For this reporting period, 7,889 individuals were provided with knowledge on human rights, Charter Change/Federalism, Anti- Terror Bill and Emergency Power Act, pandemic and vaccination, concerns of the children’s education as an effect of the Covid-19 pandemic. The participants were also updated on the status of the implementation of the CCT and other government social welfare programs. To date, total of 46,245 individuals were able to attend in the pulong bahay or town hall meetings. SNPP has now 676 community human rights advocates/defenders.
