Businesses raise P1.62 billion for Project Ugnayan

April 6, 2020 - 12:00am by Iris Gonzales
https://www.philstar.com/business/2020/04/06/2005676/businesses-raise-p162-billion-project-ugnayan

MANILA, Philippines — Some of the country’s biggest business groups have raised at least P1.62 billion in a no-fuss, no-politics initiative to help close to five million people economically displaced by the Luzon-wide enhanced community quarantine.

Project Ugnayan, a fundraising initiative of top business groups in cooperation with the Philippine Disaster Resilience Foundation (PDRF) and Caritas Manila, targets to help 7.5 million individuals in up to 1.5 million families.

The project has so far reached 985,000 families, benefiting 4.9 million individuals.

“The key was a very systematic, very quiet, no-fuss, no-politics distribution process, which proved to be very efficient and really reached families that needed it most. We followed the government guidelines on community quarantine, barangay lockdown and social distancing,” said a top executive from one of the conglomerates which joined the project.

Among the donor companies in Project Ugnayan are the Aboitiz Group, Lopez Group, Alliance Global Group, Ayala Corp. & Zobel Family, AY Foundation & RCBC, Bench, Century Pacific, Concepcion Industrial, DMCI Group of Companies, Gokongwei Group of Companies, Enrique Razon-led ICTSI, Jollibee, Mercury Drug Corp., Metrobank, Nutri-Asia, Liwayway Marketing Group, the MVP Group, Puregold, Ramon S. Ang & family, SM Group, Sunlife of Canada and Unilab.

Additional donors are Roberto Ongpin’s AlphaLand, Cebuana Lhullier, Chito Madrigal Foundation, Coca Cola, Glorious Commercial Exports Inc., FEU, First Life Financial Co., Focus Global, One Meralco Foundation, Penshoppe, PepsiCo Foundation and Shang Properties.

“We are absolutely grateful for the overwhelming response of the private conglomerates in extending their support to those who need help the most. This has enabled us to raise our initial target of helping one million to 1.5 million families and make a difference in the lives of some 7.5 million individual residents that have been economically displaced by the ongoing enhanced community quarantine in Greater Metro Manila. The project aims to deliver P1,000 worth of grocery vouchers to these families,” said Guillermo M. Luz., project spokesperson.

He said that in the last 10 days, Caritas Manila was able to distribute grocery vouchers to 218,119 families in economically-vulnerable communities, reaching some 1,090,595 individual residents.

The Caritas Manila network includes the Dioceses of Manila, Antipolo (Rizal), Cubao, Imus (Cavite), Caloocan, Malolos (Bulacan), Novaliches, Paranaque, Pasig, and San Pablo (Laguna) covering 628 parishes.

Aside from the Project’s first two channels – Caritas’ Project Damayan and ABS-CBN’s Pantawid ng Pagibig, Project Ugnayan has tapped the Asian Development Bank and the government to expand its distribution reach.

Aside from Project Ugnayan, the business groups have also opened a new program, Project Kaagapay to fund the procurement of more medical supplies for frontliners.

This will be done in partnership with Zuellig Pharma.