Migration, one of the relevant issues affecting the Philippines and the Filipino people, was the center of attention when the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) conducted an orientation for the Development Academy of the Philippines (DAP) and select local government units (LGUs) on May 11, 2016 at the Confucius Room of the DAP Building in Pasig City.

Eighteen members of the DAP project staff from the Center for Governance (CfG), Public Management Development Program (PMDP), Center for Organizational Development (COD), Council of Fellows (CoF), Institutional Marketing Center (IMC), and the Office of the Senior Vice President for Programs (OSVP-P) attended the “Orientation on Migration and Development and My JMDI Toolbox” together with five representatives from Pasig City, Quezon City, Muntinlupa City and Malabon City.

 

With UNDP partnership

The orientation was organized by the Academy’s CfG and the Local Governance and Development Office (LGDO) in partnership with the UNDP’s Joint Migration and Development Initiative (JMDI) Program.  It served as an initial undertaking in the effort to help mainstream migration and development and have its possible integration into the DAP’s programs and projects, especially those intended for LGUs, considered.

DAP President Antonio D. Kalaw Jr., in his welcome remarks, noted the significance of this orientation in making the DAP staff more aware of important and relevant issues like migration and development, and how these may be included in the Academy’s existing programs like the PMDP and in other training courses being offered by the CfG and other DAP offices.

Atty. Golda Roma, the UNDP-JMDI focal point for the Philippines, gave an overview of the program and the “My JMDI Toolbox,” a training tool consisting of six modules that may be used by local stakeholders like local authorities, civil society, migrants’ associations and the academe “in mainstreaming migration into local development planning to better harness the development potentials of migration.”

Toolbox

Select portions of this toolbox were used for the one-day orientation that was designed specifically for DAP and LGU partners.  Atty. Roma discussed some basic and relevant information on migration and development from the toolbox’s core module while Rodrigo Garcia Jr. of the Commission on Filipinos Overseas (CFO) shared knowledge about the benefits as well as the social costs of migration from the toolbox’s first, third and fourth modules.

The last session handled by Atty. Roma centered on partnership building, as well as the role of migrants as local development actors, and that of local authorities in the integration and reintegration of overseas Filipinos, which are part of the toolbox’s second and fifth modules.

A copy of the JMDI Toolbox may be downloaded for free at www.migration4development.org.