Essential community needs keep earning premium priority in Balilihan with the upcoming execution of P34 million projects under the Kapit-Bisig Laban sa Kahirapan – Comprehensive Integrated Delivery of Social Services (Kalahi-CIDSS). Officials and constituents of the interior Bohol town's 34 barangays recently identified their priorities in assemblies intended to involve communities in development activities, according to Mayor Dominisio Chatto. The municipal LGU, which vice mayor, Pureza Veloso-Chatto, is wife of Gov. Edgar Chatto, has eyed to initiate P17 million worth of projects and interventions this year until the whole Kalahi-CIDSS package is implemented in the next two years. The Kalahi-CIDSS is a community-driven development program which national implementing agency is the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD).

Under the program, communities and their local government units are trained to select, design and execute sub-projects that address their pressing needs. The Kalahi-CIDSS funds are to be downloaded to the barangays but as governed, of course, according to the mayor, by a reinforced financial control on projects, including a set of transaction and technical audits. The governor said the Kalahi-CIDSS empowers the barangays, which are the grassroot LGUs, and enhances their capacities as they at the same time practice the so-called bottom-up budgeting (BUB) or participatory grassroot budgeting process. Sec. Florencio Abad was in Bohol last Saturday and urged LGUs to observe the process, which Chatto said in their conference with the mayors at the Governor's Mansion could impact well on social capital and welfare measures.

The Balilihan mayor commended the provincial leadership for facilitating more development support thru the fresh additional Kalahi-CIDSS assistance, which the governor also launched in Ubay and other cluster areas in the province last week. The program can further encourage people's engagement in the sustainable development and inclusive growth thrust of the town which marked its 186th Founding Day or Sumad on September 29. A gem son of Balilihan, the governor graced the occasion which featured the launching of farm tourism as a new economic driver---and a climate-smart industry---and inauguration of irrigation, road, water and learning facilities. Other guests from the province were First District Board Members Cesar Tomas Lopez, Abeleon Damalerio and Venzencio Arcamo, as well as Dr. Stella Marie Lapiz who is Bohol's chief government veterinarian.

By virtue of a republic act, a special non-working holiday is observed in the municipality every Sumad, which this-year's highlights further included its patent agri-fair and awarding/recognition of new board/bar passers and DepEd and CAP achievers. The CAP or Countryside Action Program, which emphasizes the value and use of puroks in the pursuit of responsive governance, is a nationally-awarded Balilihan innovation that has framed what is now the province's gaining Countryside Development Program – Purok Power Movement (CDP-PPM). The CDP-PPM is frontlined by province-paid workers from different departments who were pooled together and trained into prosperity teams delivering goods and services to the mountains and islets where they are most needed---rain or shine, regardless of terrain, depth or current. (Venrebo Arigo)