AS part of its ongoing platform to drive inclusive urban development and sustainable growth right at the communities that needed them, the Malabon City government, led by its mayor, Antolin Oreta III, has entered a joint-partnership agreement with the Human Cities Coalition (HCC), a Netherlands-based foundation, to achieve this vision.
The collaboration between the city government and HCC was formally affirmed through a recent memorandum-of-agreement signing among Oreta; Liza Bernardo Zurbito, HCC Program manager; Maria Lina Punzalan, Malabon City Planning and Development Coordinator; Ronald Lenz, HCC director; and Esther Bosgra, HCC operations manager. Also there to witness the milestone partnership is Her Excellency Marion Derckx, Netherlands ambassador to the Philippines together with the city council members and representatives from HCC partner groups and slum communities.
Under the agreement, both parties will help improve the lives of the Malabon City residents by jointly identifying, developing and implementing innovative programs to develop a livable and sustainable, highly urbanized city communities and parties related to the collaborative project sites selected by HCC and Malabon City government.
By entering the said cooperative partnership, the city government believes that it will boost its ongoing community-development plan to transform Malabon slum areas into livable, safe and highly sustainable urban zones.
Oreta expressed the importance of the joint collaboration with HCC to realize the city’s long-term development vision.
“HCC is helping us develop our communities, namely, in terms of improving the drainage system, surveying the land. Hopefully, this will become a model for future sustainable development plans. [For the project], two areas in Barangay Catmon and one in Tonsuya will serve as the pilot locations. What makes it a noteworthy venture is that the HCC will be guiding and teaching the LGU [local government unit]on how it will be sustained and developed. Through this we will also have data banking, which, being a vital source of information, the LGU can use in helping out or in designing better community-based plans or solutions,” the mayor shared.
Commenting on the collaboration, Lenz welcomed the development as he believes this will greatly benefit the city’s poor inhabitants.
“We believe in a human-centered approach where we work directly with communities to find out what their needs are, and to see if we can make smart, viable and sustainable business scapes together with the private sector. We work in a larger area of the Manila Bay, but our first collaboration is here in Malabon City, where we work with the people of barangays Catmon and Tonsuya. Because we believe in creating solutions first, we learn and build out the best solutions to a larger scale, like the entire city of Malabon and even in other LGUs in greater Manila,” he said.