(13 April 2020, Pasay City, Philippines) SM has contributed PHP100 million to a multisector COVID-19 poverty relief initiative called Project Ugnayan. This is in addition to PHP170 million in medical supplies donations to over 50 hospitals nationwide that helped equip health workers in the battle against the coronavirus pandemic.
Project Ugnayan aims to bring much-needed support to over 1.5 million families (or 7.6 million persons) affected by the COVID-19 outbreak.
The project is an assembly of local corporations, the government and the Philippine Disaster Resilience Foundation (PDRF) to fund aid to urban poor residents in Greater Metro Manila and nearby provinces. The project has raised over PHP1.6 billion in pledges from over 30 participating corporations.
Project Ugnayan has mainly tapped into Caritas Manila’s Project Damayan for the distribution of supermarket vouchers to underprivileged families and ABS-CBN’s Pantawid ng Pag-ibig as well as the Asian Development Bank and the Government’s Bayan, Bayanihan Project for the distribution of food packages.