Australia is one of the top three bilateral grant aid donors along with the United States and Japan. The Philippines is among Australia's five largest development partners including Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and Solomon Islands (AusAID, www.ausaid.gov.au).
Australia's aid program in the Philippines is centred on three focus areas: economic growth, basic education and national stability and human security. The AYAD-VIDA Programs aim to bridge the gap through placements in the following sectors under the three AusAID focus areas.
Currently, the following have been identified as priority sectors for volunteer deployment:
According to ADB (Poverty in the Philippines, 2005), it is estimated that disabled people make up approximately 10% of any given population. This would mean more than 8.5 million PWD in 2005 in the Philippines alone. Focus, therefore, must be placed on ability rather than disability in order to break the cycle of poverty and disability.
Children comprise about 31% of the total population of the Philippines in 2001 (NSO, www.census.gov.ph). Of this, approximately 17,000 are reported abused, 60,000 prostituted and 1.5 million living in the streets. UNICEF cites that the Government's globalization policy has made the economy more internationally competitive, but it has also exposed children to such negative influences as family separation, dangerous drugs and urban poverty.
In a SARD Regional Workshop in 2004, then Department of Agriculture Secretary Lorenzo said that there will always be a migration from the rural to urban sector because of the rush by Asian leaders to adopt the Western model without going through a process. It has been identified that NGOs and the private sector play vital roles in inculcating the value of SARD among a wider constituency.
Community development has been identified as an effective strategy in dealing with problems related to poverty (Gray, 1996). Thus if a community, a basic social unit after the family, and its members are empowered, this empowerment transcends to the whole nation.
Poverty continues to weaken access of families and individuals to formal and alternative learning systems. This is aggravated by the continuing decline of the quality of formal basic education provided by the state and private sector (MTPDP 2004-10). Basic education bore the effects of continuing rapid population growth, estimated at 2.3 percent annually. The government calls on the private sector, NGOs, civil society groups, LGUs and other concerned sectors to be partners in meeting the needs of early childhood and basic education.
The Philippines is known to be among the leading sources of migrant workers worldwide (VFF, www.visayanforum.org). Traffickers organize their transport operations through ingress and egress points in the country. According to Visayan Forum Foundation, every year, thousands of Filipino women and children are trapped through the cycle of trafficking into a life of slavery, sexual exploitation and human rights violations.
Click on the files below to read more about the AYAD-VIDA Country Focus in the Philippines.