DULANGAN, DAVAO

Dulangan is a rural community located in Digos City, Davao Del Sur, Mindanao. At the time of writing, it had a population of 1,659 and its land area was 4,313 hectares. Dulangan residents are either farmers or seasonal agricultural workers with an average family income of Php2,100 a month or about USD 39.

Dulangan has a special history as it has already learnt the value of community support and cooperation. The community understands that cooperation is the key to achieving a bright future for themselves and their children . Some infrastructure facilities already built include a barangay hall, multipurpose hall and a health centre. An elementary school has also been built.

It is now time to rebuild their own houses. The Dulangan community is in dire need of better housing with most families living in houses made of temporary materials.

The Barangay Dulangan Housing Village is a socialized housing project to provide decent houses to 70 families. It will adopt the save-and-build approach as a core strategy in order to achieve its objectives.

A series of orientation about the Habitat's save-and-build program is being conducted among potential home owner partners.

This covers the following topics:

1. Family selection, organization of savings groups and savings mobilization to raise 1/3 of the total house cost as savings equity of home partners and

2. Creation and strengthening of a Home Owner Partners association on the key concepts, values, principles and processes of sustainable community development.

Each home partner is required to render 400 hours of sweat equity as a means of reducing the house cost payment. With 60% of its members as potential home partners, the DCWDMC (Dulangan Consumers Welfare and Development Multi-purpose Cooperative) will handle and ensure 100% collection of monthly house repayments.

An additional requirement set by the community is that all qualified home partners must also apply to become members of the Cooperative.

To assist with the repayments of the housing materials, this committed local community has started an income generating activity in the form of a community goat rearing project. This will involve the 70 families who are rebuilding their houses. BCA has committed $8,000 over 3 years to fund this program. Repayment has to be made on this also; so it is another case of a 'hand-up' instead of a 'hand-out' scenario.

The local community has signed a Memoranda of Agreement with BCA on these programs.