Since leaders of the Catholic Church embraced Project Serendipity as their positive action to uplift the poor, the idea of radically reforming government and society to empower the people has assumed a life of its own and evolved into a movement, even a crusade.
Project Serendipity is a novel step—a revolutionary one—meant to benefit the poor in ways previous administrations failed to do. Bishop Arturo M. Bastes, S.V.D. of the Diocese of Sorsogon, who advocated the institution of Project Serendipity has emphatically stated “to focus attention to the poor means to do something concrete for the poor."
The Philippine economy has recorded positive growths the past years but it has excluded the poor—majority of whom are fishermen, farmers and children in the rural areas. With economic development, social security must not be far behind.
This is not the case in the country. Budgetary allocations for social services that directly benefit individual citizens have been increased in the 2016 budget. Allocation for the Conditional Cash Transfer program or Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps), the flagship poverty alleviation program of the Aquino Administration amounted to P64 billion. Recently, the Department of Social Welfare and Development reported that the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR) second round of assessment showed a total of 1,511,320 beneficiaries improving their status to “non-poor,” representing 36 percent of the total 4.2 million active program beneficiaries.
Yet, poverty persists. There must be something terribly wrong with the system when the same problem worsens from one president to the next. We agonized over this phenomenon and arrived at the conclusion that a self-serving government is incapable of serving the real master—the sovereign people of the Philippines.
For as long as Malacañang prepares the yearly budget for itself and the agencies under it, the House and Senate review and add their own budgets for themselves, and the Budget Management chief controls the gate valves for the release and actual use of such a yearly budget, there will be little that trickle down to the people in terms of actual benefits.
This systemic misallocation of funds to those who are at the center of political power, is what Project Serendipity seeks to overhaul.
By automatically setting aside one- fifth of the government’s total resources to social security and welfare the way the governments of Norway and Singapore do it, we will have a social welfare system for every Filipino, insulated from politics.
The People Power Revolution and along with the aspiration for real empowerment of the Filipinos motivated the establishment of Project Serendipity.
The underlying dream behind Project Serendipity could only be translated to reality if the next set of national leaders will likewise embrace it.
It may have been providential that Senator Grace Poe, daughter of FPJ, and Senator Chiz Escudero, her running mate, have both embraced Project Serendipity when they signed the Covenant of Support last April 9 at the Bacon Parish in Sorsogon City.
Project Serendipity seeks to provide universal social security welfare fund to cover all Filipinos and address the need for housing, education, livelihood & recovery assistance needs, and pension, retirement and social security– advocacies summed up as H.E.L.P.S.
H for health & nutrition; E for education; L for livelihood and economic relief; P for pension advocacy for retirees; and S for shelter advocacy for decent housing.
In a way, Project Serendipity has been inspired by the little known works of the late FPJ in bringing to fruition a private social welfare system, the MOWELFUND for workers in the country’s movie industry and other social and scholarship projects he nurtured without fanfare.
It must have been FPJ’s intuitive response to the realities behind the trials and tribulations of the characters he portrayed in almost all of his movies, that of being oppressed or as the champion for the oppressed.
His charitable acts were legendary and he extended help in small and big ways to the ordinary Filipinos, to relatives and friends in the industry, and to those families affected by natural disasters — without fanfare and media mileage.
Under this program, the Grace Poe-Chiz EscuderoAdministration is committed to abolish conflict and promote harmony between classes.
The payback will be tremendous.