Muntinlupa City has been hailed as the Most Child-Friendly City in the National Capital Region and conferred with the Seal of Child-Friendly Local Governance.
The Regional Committee for the Welfare of Children conferred the Seal to Muntinlupa for its exemplary programs on children’s welfare and development on Wednesday at the Muntinlupa Sports Complex in Tunasan.
Muntinlupa garnered the highest rank among the 17 NCR local government units in the Child-Friendly Local Governance Audit facilitated by the RCWC, Inter-Agency Monitoring Task Force, and National Award Committee Secretariat for the 2016 SCFLG conferees.
All NCR LGUs passed the qualifying score and were conferred with the Seal. Being the top-scorer for the region, Muntinlupa will vie for the national title of the Most Child-Friendly City in the highly urbanized city category.
Mayor Jaime Fresnedi attributed the city government’s nutrition programs, expanded educational assistance, enabling legislation, and investment on child-care projects, which have reached P634 million, for the recognition.
Through intensive intervention programs on nutrition and maternal care, Muntinlupa improved from having the highest prevalence of undernourished children under six years old in NCR at 5.07 percent in 2014 to just 1.5 percent in 2015.
The Early Childhood Care and Development National Council also recognized Muntinlupa as an ECCD Champion, having 7,378 students aged 3 to 4 at 93 Child Development Centers across local communities, and benchmarked by international and local councils such as in Columbia, Pangasinan, Bicol, and Cagayan, among other localities.
Educational assistance is given to Muntinlupa youth through monthly cash allowances. As of 2017, the city has almost 40,000 scholars in elementary and high school alone, not including beneficiaries in college, technical-vocational, and other school programs.
For children protection initiatives, the local government partners with Saklolo at Gabay ng Ina at Pamilya (SAGIP), a 24/7 crisis response center caring for abused women and children, to reduce cases on child abuse.
Muntinlupa vows to continually promote and protect children’s welfare and their right to life, survival, and development, Fresnedi said.