The Community Empowerment thru Science and Technology (CEST) program aims to provide livelihood and alleviate poverty in remote communities.

The program’s implementation entails provision and transfer of technology-based livelihood projects to the identified communities. This will also facilitate the transfer of technologies to beneficiaries along the areas of education, health and nutrition, water and sanitation, disaster risk reduction, and industry development or livelihood.

Fully aligned with the national agenda of development enunciated in President Aquino’s Social Contract with the Filipino People, DOST is taking up the challenge for community empowerment puts it more in the frontline of fighting poverty by empowering the marginalized segments of society. 

To this challenge of community empowerment, the DOST in partnership with other government agencies and working sectors will contribute S&T interventions to help bear against the barriers erected by poverty and deprivation. 

Five development challenge areas that lend themselves well to S&T responses show the extent of interventions that DOST can introduce in the target communities. The desired results from implemented interventions contribute in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDG)s being pursued by the country relative to poverty reduction and people empowerment.