As part of the Joint Programme on Youth, Employment and Migration
under the UN Millennium Development Goals Fund, IOM is establishing
One-Stop Migrant Resource Centres (OSRCs) in the Philippine
provinces of Masbate, Antique, Maguindanao and Agusan del Sur.
The OSRCs will be multi-stakeholder centres run by the
provincial governments. They will also provide national agencies
such as the Philippine Overseas Employment Agency (POEA) and the
Overseas Workers' Welfare Association (OWWA) with local office
space to make them more accessible to their constituents in remote
areas.
Migrant civil society organizations and migrant family
organizations will also be involved in providing services and
trainings in the centres, which are scheduled to be up and running
by mid-2012.
The centres will address the issues of migrants, their families,
and in particular, the youth, by providing advice on safe and legal
migration; local opportunities for migrant reintegration, savings,
investment and entrepreneurship; financial literacy trainings; case
management services; psychosocial counselling and paralegal
services.
IOM is also creating an OSRC client database management system
that will assist in profiling clients and tracking the services
provided to them. The system, which will be operational in the
first quarter of 2012, will also collect and generate migration
data that can be used by local communities.
Each OSRC will have a coordinating committee composed of four
sub-committees: 1) Information Education, Research, Networking and
Advocacy; 2) Psychosocial Services; 3) Economic, Savings and
Investment Programme; and 4) Migration and Development
Initiatives.
IOM has begun to build the capacity of these committees by
organizing exposure trips, seminars and trainings. A group of 38
representatives from the four provinces visited different
migration-related government agencies in Manila; learned about the
agencies' programmes and services; and discussed the issues of
their provinces with senior officials.
The study tour also took the delegates to the Calabarzon region
to learn from migration and development initiatives being
implemented there. Some 55 provincial representatives were given a
trainer's training on financial literacy. Another 39 provincial
delegates were provided training on case management, psychosocial
counselling and paralegal services.
Antique stakeholders are now organizing to replicate the
financial literacy training this year. Agusan del Sur is also
scheduled to hold its own financial literacy training at the end of
October.
To address sustainability issues, IOM is working with the four
areas' provincial legislatures to institutionalize the OSRCs and to
mainstream them into their provincial development plans and annual
budgets.
For more information, please contact:
Ricardo Casco
IOM Manila
Tel: +632 230 1752
E-mail:
"mailto:rcasco@iom.int">rcasco@iom.int
Catherine Calalay
Tel: +632 230 1888
E-mail:
"mailto:ccalalay@iom.int">ccalalay@iom.int
or
Chris Lom
IOM Bangkok
Tel: +66819275215
E-mail:
"mailto:clom@iom.int">clom@iom.int