The 10th CODE-NGO National Assembly resolved in 2006 to “initiate some studies as to the feasibility of coming up with a retirement fund for the staff of the different CODE NGO organizations; and to mobilize resources to try and develop some mechanisms of providing health insurance and pension funds for organizations and workers of these organizations as well as networks.”

This resolve was further strengthened when the CODE-NGO’s 4th National Congress in 2007 approved to include “Caring for Development NGO Workers” in its Strategic Thrusts for 2007-2011.  A specific action step identified by the Congress to pursue this thrust is to ”maximize our network and partner with responsive service providers to develop improved packages for health, life and accident insurance and pension plans for NGO workers.”

– Partnership of Philippine Support Service Agencies (PHILSSA) – ValuCare Health Services, Inc. (HMO service provider)

CODE-NGO has made the following steps to pursue the network’s thrust of caring for NGO workers:

• through PHILSSA, it consulted a sample of its member networks, base organizations and their employees about their service expectations and openness to join a common health, life insurance and pension program

• it requested PHILSSA, a pioneer for this type of program, to open its own HMO and Life Insurance Enrollment Program to the employees of other CODE-NGO member networks and their base organizations.

Among those who joined PHILSSA’s HMO and life insurance enrollment program and benefited from its improved service packages at lower premium rates are the CODE-NGO Secretariat, PHILDHRRA Secretariat and CSDO-SC Secretariat (a member of MINCODE).

CODE-NGO plans to further promote this enrollment program to the other member networks so that more NGO workers could benefit from this service; to create a technical working group to study further how to resolve issues concerning administration and advance payment of service contract for a large group of enrollees; and explore feasible pension and retirement schemes for NGO workers.