June 13, 2025
For Mary Joyce Martinez, a mother of five from Talim Island in Rizal, each day means stretching every penny they had just to put food on the table. Dreams of becoming someone her children could look up to or a neighbor her community could count on was once a quiet hope, often blurred by the noise of daily hardships and quest for survival. But in 2013, lady luck smiled on them. Her family became part of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps)— the flagship poverty-alleviation program of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD). What started as support for […]