CDP makes communities disaster-resilient, and it works.
190
📋
Training and capacity building sessions delivered across all programs in 2025
291
🌱
DRR and climate adaptation actions documented in 2025 — exceeding annual targets by 43%
180
🤲
Community members mentored as ICBDRRM-AA facilitators, now leading preparedness in their own barangays
27
🏛️
Empowering Filipino communities in disaster preparedness since 1999
55,701
👥
Individuals directly trained in disaster risk reduction and management
2,962,576
🤝
Community members reached through our partner organizations and programs
544
🏘️
Barangays and communities engaged in disaster preparedness programs
33
📍
Provinces across the Philippines where CDP has worked
2,183
📚
Disaster risk reduction training sessions delivered since 1999
127
✅
CBDRRM, research, advocacy, and humanitarian response projects since 1999
110
🗺️
Cities and municipalities across the Philippines where CDP has operated
For 27 years — since 1999 — CDP Foundation has worked alongside communities, local governments, and civil society organizations across the Philippines to build something that outlasts any project or program: resilience through community-led development. Our work is not about delivering aid. It is about ensuring that the 2.96 million Filipinos in our partner communities already know what to do before the typhoon hits, before the earthquake strikes, and long after the cameras leave.
Our vision: safe, resilient, and thriving communities — where every person, regardless of age, ability, gender, or circumstance, is an active agent of their own disaster preparedness and recovery.
Resilience Starts with Empowered Communities
At CDP Foundation, we believe that the most powerful form of resilience is the kind of resilience communities build for themselves. Since our founding in 1999, we have partnered with 544+ communities across 33 provinces — from the coastal barangays of Camarines Norte to the highlands of Benguet to the conflict-affected areas of Mindanao — equipping local leaders, women's organizations, youth groups, and people with disabilities with the tools and knowledge to lead their own disaster risk reduction.
In 2025 alone, CDP delivered 190 training programs, supported 291 community-led disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation actions, and mentored 180 ICBDRRM volunteers across the Anticipatory and Humanitarian Action Program, and engaged 471 unique stakeholders through the DKH partnership. Whether through localizing humanitarian action, supporting survivor- and community-led recovery, or nurturing community-driven innovation, CDP is committed to one thing: amplifying what communities already know how to do, and giving them the space to lead.
Our Unique Approach
CDP began in 1999 as the training desk of the Citizens' Disaster Response Center. Today, we are recognized by the Office of Civil Defense as the national hub for Community-Based Disaster Risk Reduction and Management (CBDRRM) in the Philippines — and our work reaches from local barangay planning rooms to the United Nations World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in Sendai.
What sets us apart is not our scale, but our method. Our four core approaches are:
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Inclusive CBDRRM (ICBDRRM) — We train communities using a learner-centered, participatory approach that integrates the perspectives of children and youth, women, persons with disabilities, and indigenous peoples. Our training methodology became the national standard: the CBDRRM Basic Instructors Guide (BIG), co-developed with JICA and the Office of Civil Defense, is now the official training module used by local government staff nationwide.
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Survivor- and Community-Led Resilience (SCLR) — Through programs like SHARPER and YIELDS, communities are not beneficiaries of resilience — they are its architects. In 2025, partner communities under SCLR drove 291 locally-initiated actions in flood preparedness, climate adaptation, livelihood recovery, and ecosystem protection.
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Anticipatory Action (AA) — CDP works with communities and local governments to put plans and resources in place before disasters strike, not after. In 2025, 5 AA proposals were approved and funded through our partnerships with DKH and other humanitarian actors.
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Grantmaking (ACSF) — Through the Abot-Kamay Community Solidarity Fund (ACSF), CDP channels direct resources to people's organizations and community groups — recognizing and leveraging the existing assets, strengths, and capacities that communities already hold.
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Across all four approaches, CDP's work is guided by the Humanitarian-Development-Peace (HDP) Nexus — integrating disaster risk reduction, climate resilience, and peacebuilding so that our interventions address not just the hazard, but the root causes of vulnerability.
Local Solutions for Global Challenges
The communities most exposed to disaster — along typhoon corridors, beside flood-prone rivers, on landslide-vulnerable hillsides — are also the communities most capable of finding solutions, when given the chance.
CDP's Pinnovation Academy (Pinoy Innovation Academy) proved this. In Phase 1 alone, 15 community-led innovation projects — from a solar-powered emergency radio system in the Visayas, to a women-managed mangrove conservation area in Mindanao, to accessible transport for persons with disabilities in Las Piñas — reached 32,908 indirect beneficiaries. These innovations survived their first real test when Typhoon Paeng struck in 2022: the merged fishing gear was the only one still standing in the storm; the bamboo dike held; the indigenous healing center was distributing medicines to flood-affected communities 30 kilometers away from the project site.
CDP's work on climate change adaptation and mitigation (CCAM), gender-responsive DRRM, disability-inclusive resilience (DiDRRM), and ecosystem-based approaches is grounded in the same principle: local communities are not the problem. They are the solution. Our role is to help them access the resources, recognition, and policy space they deserve.
Building a Movement for Lasting Change
CDP's work has never been limited to the project site. Since 2002, we have been a leading voice in the movement to reshape Philippine disaster policy — organizing the 1st National Conference on Community-Based Disaster Management, forming the Philippine Disaster Management Forum (PDMF), and leading the civil society coalition that secured the passage of Republic Act 10121 in 2010, the Philippine Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Act.
Today, as Lead Convener of DRRNetPhils and an active member of global networks including GNDR (Global Network of Civil Society Organizations for Disaster Reduction), NEAR Network, ALNAP, ARISE, and the ADRRN, CDP continues to bring Filipino community voices to the global stage — advocating for policies that put people at the center of disaster governance.
As part of the global #ShiftThePower movement, we are committed to democratizing aid and philanthropy: ensuring that resources flow to, and decisions rest with, the people on the frontlines. We are building a movement — across communities, local governments, civil society, academia, and the private sector — for resilience systems that endure long after any external project has ended.
In 2026, CDP commits to deepening this movement: expanding into underserved communities in Mindanao and conflict-affected areas, establishing a permanent learning center, building our endowment for long-term sustainability, and growing the next generation of Filipino CBDRRM leaders.
Padayon. Let us continue — together.
