“Hindi kami makapagpapatapos ng anak sa kolehiyo kung wala ang tulong ng Patawid Pamilya at SLP, kung kaya’t sasamantalahin ko ang oportunidad na ito upang pasalamatan ang lahat ng bumubuo ng DSWD.”

Beaming with gratitude, Virgilia Hernaez, 45 years old from Commonwealth, Quezon City, shared the positive changes in her family’s life after being a beneficiary of the programs of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) in front of DSWD-NCR employees during yesterday’s flag raising ceremony.

Virgilia proudly stated how she and her husband Marcelo, 54 years old, a construction worker, successfully enabled their two (2) older children to finish their studies in Computer Programming and Information Technology, respectively.

Using the capital assistance that the Hernaez family loaned in 2013 from the Sustainable Livelihood Program (SLP), she put up a mini-store of frozen items including tocino, hotdog and longganisa.

Within six (6) months, Virgilia’s association has returned their loaned capital assistance to DSWD which made them eligible to avail of the Ahon kabuhayan program of the Philippine Goodworks Mission Foundation, Inc. (PGMFI) in May 2014.

Also, since she already has children who are computer specialists, her family is now engaged in a business of computer rental which is prominently called as “pisonet.”

As far as they can, Virgilia shared that they are trying their best to be a model family in their community in order to inspire others that by properly utilizing the government’s assistance and enhancing self-motivation to improve living condition, poverty can actually be defeated.

Hernaez’ family is among the 234,970 Pantawid Pamilya household-beneficiaries in Metro Manila who are receiving cash grants for health and education of their children based on their compliance to the conditionalities of the program.### (DSWD FO-NCR, Social Marketing Office November 4, 2014)