SAGE Phils at PCSI National Congress (a coordinator’s thoughts)
March 2nd, 2009Last February 28, 2009, I’ve had the privilege of speaking to university students, professors, and executives at the Philippine Council for Student Intrapreneurship (PCSI) National Congress, held in Clark, Pampanga, a former US Air Force base (but now an economic zone) in the Philippines during the Vietnam war. My talk, entitled “Creating Better Futures through Social Entrepreneurship”, was about young people, social entrepreneurship, and of course SAGE. I also managed to highlight the Millennium Development Goals, which is the current focus of the entire SAGE network and gave the good news of our newly-formed partnership with Youth Venture Philippines (Ahoka Foundation).
I must admit that right from the moment I received my invitation to the National Congress, I was nervous and intimidated from joining a roster of heavyweight speakers. I had a tough act to follow especially since I was set to speak after Prof. Marlo Sanchez, a very charismatic entrepreneurship guru who has his own radio show, a broadcaster awardee, and most of all, a man gifted with the most wonderful sense of humor to boot. The main premise of his talk was that in the time of an economic crisis, all of us should see it as an opportunity to start a business. In fact, the worst time of putting up a business has already passed according to him. In Philippine history, the economy was so bad in the 1980s when the entire country was revolting against a dictator; the Philippine peso depreciated in value from 13 pesos to a dollar to 29 pesos in a matter of hours and banks offered interest that was as high as 40%. Our economy today is certainly much better off when government is very much aggressive to the formation of small-medium enterprises and banks are offering business-friendly loans. Prof. Sanchez gave a positive encouragement to the young university students who were present at that Congress by telling them that putting up a business can be a means to achieving their dreams.
Another speaker, Undersecretary Lourdes Trasmonte from the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) also presented the latest statistics about young people in the Philippines and their plight when it comes to employment and entrepreneurship. [Never in my wildest dreams have I imagined having a top-level government official as a fellow speaker and she actually came early for my talk.] One-half of the unemployed in the Philippines are young people in the ages of 15-24 years old. Each year 1 million young people enter the labor force, who are less employable than their adult counterparts because of low qualifications and lack of work experience. Finally she mentions that entrepreneurship for young people is the solution to this labor issue. DOLE has already constructed the Youth Entrepreneurship Support program, which helps young people come up with a business from planning to access to seed funding. Because of this, SAGE Philippines is currently requesting exploratory meetings with USec. Trasmonte and DOLE for a future partnership.
However, the most exciting part of the event was in the afternoon when teams presented their social businesses in the SAGE format. These were college and high school students telling us about their projects in their respective communities from all over the Philippines, even as far as the conflict areas in Mindanao. It is really a good thing that I don’t judge in any of the SAGE competitions. I wouldn’t know which team to pick at all. These students are so inspiring! One of the teams that caught my eye has been running their social enterprise for three years. They run a microfinance company, helping out families below the poverty threshold whose children are forced to work at a firecracker company so the parents can make ends meet. Because of the team’s microfinancing and livelihood training programs, parents managed to have other streams of income aside from their day jobs and their kids do not have to work under dangerous conditions making pyrotechnic devices.
Other teams who presented their projects talked about preserving a native delicacy and helping out women into becoming entrepreneurs from their own homes. One group decided to teach an indigeneous ethnic tribe a livelihood program and helping them sell their product! Another talked about implementing feeding programs for elementary kids while financing pedicab ownership for their mothers.
It is awe-inspiring to see young people make a difference in the world through their own communities. It makes me love SAGE and being a country coordinator even more. There are some reflections that I would like to share from this experience. One, is that being 26 years old myself, I do have a lot to learn about running a nonprofit in a country who still has to understand that young people have to perform a role in changing society for the better. In the PCSI conference, I was able to meet members of an older generation who actually believe in what we are doing. Many of them gave their heartfelt encouragement and I am truly grateful to have met them. (Trust me, all of us do need the occasional pat in the back for the work that we are doing). I worried that I made a mess in my presentation, there were some technical impediments that I encountered, some compatibility issues between powerpoint versions, but still some members of the audience approached me and inquired about SAGE.
Two, I also realized that young people are more effective in their work if they are better informed about the social issues they are facing. During my talk, I have to say I encountered some blank faces when I asked the college kids how many MDGs there are. None of them even knew what an MDG is, which was a little unsettling. But they knew about the social problems in their towns and some of them came up with knowledgeable studies profiling their communities. Maybe it is time that we put a research component in our programs. I would love to see our websites carrying information not just about putting up social enterprises but also about concrete data about societal conditions.
Lastly, I’d like to offer some encouragement to my fellow volunteers and country coordinators in SAGE. Even if there is a lot to be done, there are more opportunities than challenges. Like what was said during the closing remarks by Mr. Rosenberg (forgive me for failing to remember his first name but I can tell you he was a President of Nasdaq when he was 29 years old), failure and success are both states of mind and it is better to choose the latter as an overriding attitude in achieving our global vision.
- Tess Garcia, Country SAGE Coordinator for the Philippines