According to the Listahanan of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), about 301,657 youth aged 15 to 30 years old are living in poor households regionwide on which the male dominates the total number of poor youth with 52 percent.
Listahanan, a government mechanism that identifies who and where the poor are nationwide, records 54,500 poor youth in Occidental Mindoro; 77,828 in Oriental Mindoro; 19,563 in Marinduque; 30,360 in Romblon; and 119,406 in Palawan.
Presidential Proclamation No. 75, s. 1948 designated June 19 as Filipino Youth Day.
“DSWD uses the Proxy Means Test (PMT), a statistical model that estimates household income using verifiable indicators such as household composition, housing structure, educational attainment of members, material assets and access to basic services which is deemed critical to identify the socio-economic status of a family,” said Regional Director Wilma Naviamos.
PMT estimated household income is compared to the existing provincial threshold set by the Philippine Statistics Authority. Income falls below the poverty threshold is considered poor while income above the threshold is tagged as non-poor.
Profile of the Poor Youth
A total of 73,715 (24.4%) of poor youth have finished high school level; 44,468 (14.7%) finished elementary level; and 1,892 (0.6%) finished college level. However, 14,323 (4.8%) youth have no grade completed.
For the labor force, 96,601 (32.0%) poor youth reported having jobs in which 43,322 of them work as unskilled and laborers while 34,298 are farmers, fisherfolks, and forestry workers. On the other hand, 205,056 (68%) poor youth have no jobs.
From the total poor youth, 5,924 claimed as solo parents and 6,004 youth were recorded pregnant during the household assessment.
Program for the Youth
“As an intervention, the Department implements social protection programs such as the Government Internship Program that provides temporary employment to marginalized and the out-of-school-youth,” said Director Naviamos.
Each year, 81 youth are hired for this internship program regionwide.
Unlad Kabataan Program is geared towards the total development of the disadvantaged youth in terms of spiritual, economic, physical, psychological-cultural and social development.
Also, the DSWD’s Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) in partnership with other government agencies developed the Youth Development Session (YDS), a modular session which targets children of 4Ps beneficiaries. It aims to motivate youth in finishing their education and serves as a venue to foster relationship creating peer support group.
In MIMAROPA, 138, 9423 youth benefitted the YDS since 2016, concluded Naviamos.
