BROOKLYN, United States — In July 2025, the World Bank Group approved the Philippines Community Resilience Project, also known as “Pagkilos”—meaning “action” in Filipino—to move forward in 2026.
The Problem
According to the 2025 WorldRiskIndex, the Philippines is the most disaster-prone country in the world. Impoverished areas are often more susceptible to damage from natural disasters like typhoons, mudslides and flooding, because infrastructure does not protect them as it does wealthier populations. For much of recent history, the Philippines has suffered from flooding tied to poor infrastructure management and a lack of urban planning.
A 2025 Rappler report on flooding in Bacolod and Talisay found that the problem drew louder calls for systemic reform once it began reaching affluent subdivisions, with both the urban poor and the elite now affected in a province “ill-equipped for climate shocks.” The case highlights a broader pattern in which flood protection for poorer communities often lags until wealthier areas are hit too.
In October 2025, the World Bank reported that 15.5% of the Filipino population lived in poverty. Women in the Philippines earn, on average, an estimated 78% of what men earn — and less in some rural areas — leaving Filipinas disproportionately affected by poverty. Likewise, many Indigenous peoples in the Philippines continue to face land grabs, encroaching mining projects and other forms of discrimination that push many into poverty. The Ayta people of Pampanga and Tarlac have spent years resisting mining companies that have rerouted and polluted the rivers they depend on, undermining their health and security.
Women and Indigenous peoples therefore face a higher risk of harm from natural disasters — an issue the World Bank and its partners set out to address directly.
The Project
The Philippines Community Resilience Project aims to reach 500 municipalities in 49 provinces nationwide, benefiting approximately 18 million disaster-prone households. Using a community-driven approach and climate-smart strategies, local volunteers will implement measures like flood control, agroforestry, slope protection and erosion mitigation in their own communities.
Partners are also targeting areas where at least 10% of the population is Indigenous, reaching about a third of the country’s total Indigenous population. The project draws on the Kalahi-CIDSS program, which over more than two decades has completed at least 92,000 subprojects across the Philippines, enlisting local people to design, direct and execute plans for infrastructure change.
For instance, in 2004, a deluge killed more than 1,000 people in rural Kinabuhayan, Quezon. After Kalahi-CIDSS facilitated the construction of a flood wall there, the community stayed safe through later storms. The Philippines Community Resilience Project aims to replicate that kind of protection on a much larger scale, delivering long-term safety for vulnerable people across the country.
Kalahi-CIDSS’s community-oriented strategy is meant to give local people the agency to make the changes they actually need, rather than adopting blanket solutions that may not fit. That agency is meant to outlast the project itself, showing communities that they have the power to drive large-scale change.
What Comes Next
In April 2026, the project moved into four rural provinces with high poverty rates and larger populations of women and Indigenous peoples: Abra, Apayao, Benguet and Mountain Province. Recipients and participants received it positively, convinced of its potential to help those in need.
Project leaders are currently hosting orientations for volunteers and local government officials, outlining the project’s goals and strategies and explaining how those involved can help. In its earliest stages, Pagkilos is set to reach its goals by 2030.
– Aren Lau
Aren is based in Brooklyn, NY, USA and focuses on Good News and Technology for The Borgen Project.
Photo: Unsplash