Happy 2nd Birthday, Hapinoy!

Can’t believe that we just celebrated Hapinoy’s 2nd Year Anniversary

Technically, what we’re marking is the time we had our formal “launch” which was September of 2007; but that still doesn’t include around a year’s worth of concept development, prototyping, and forming the initial partnerships.

I still clearly remember Hapinoy’s initial launch (link here); We didn’t really have any MicroVentures organization yet (Nino Mendoza, TJ Agulto, and Nick Geaga were still early joiners), so Bam and I were actually the ones who made and burned the press launch CD’s for distribution. Thankfully, one of Chairman Rapa Lopa’s organizations, FOCI, lent a helping hand in organizing the event. At that time, we had all of (7) Hapinoy Community Stores in (7) towns.

Fast forward two years later, and Hapinoy is now working with 70+ towns, each with its own Hapinoy Community Store; Through this network, we’re reaching thousands and thousands of smaller Hapinoy sari-sari stores. The MicroVentures family has also grown to a robust organization of 20+ passionate individuals, and looks to still expand by the end of the year.

Our 2nd year anniversary was humble yet extremely meaningful, led and organized by TJ Agulto (who by the way, is really creating and permeating the Hapinoy spirit across the organization and our Nanays). Bam was pleasantly surprised that although we weren’t hands-on with the program organization, it turned out so beautifully.

Indeed, it was an escalatingly emotionally-charged anniversary, with TJ leading the program and pushing people’s buttons. It started with “Hapinoy Wins”, an exercise to infuse the mentality of abundance for everyone. Then, we dove into a “kapihan” session wherein MicroVentures/CARD staff dialogued with the Nanays on various topics – relating to their experiences, learnings, as well as Hapinoy’s [12] Gabay – the values we espouse and hold dear as a community.

I then had a portion to share an update on where Hapinoy stands now, and give a peek on our future plans. The message was very pointed : “we’ve come so far, yet we still have a long way to go”. Despite our rapid growth and evolution, we just wanted to share that there’s still a lot of opportunity in the years ahead, with the Community Store owners playing a pivotal role in this roadmap.

It was quite a heavy morning, so we broke for lunch – made possible by our sponsors Rommel Juan of Binalot and Board Member Manny de-Luna. It was here that a little bit of light-hearted activities came to play. There was a dance number of the new staff of MicroVentures, as well as — yes — myself, Bam, and CARD-BDS’ Julius Alip performing in front with the Nanays.

The afternoon picked up the momentum from the morning. Bam crystallized the vision of One Hapinoy Nation for the group, painting a picture of how Hapinoy is not just about our individual stores, but really a nationwide community that supports microentrepreneurs which thus contributes to nation-building. This then segued into a showing of “The Last Journey of Ninoy”, which was really intense and deeply appreciated by the audience.

The last two activities really made it a well-rounded anniversary. We had an activity wherein people were given cards on which they can write notes that we can give to each other – which was really an opportunity to give gratitude, thanks, and appreciation. After this, we ended with a live performance of the Hapinoy Song “Bagong Araw”, rendered by none other than Pabsy Pabalan (a recent recruit who wrote the song, now handling Hapinoy’s communications activities), RG Salazar (our head of Field Operations), AJ Rodriguez (Community Store Development and Operations Manager), and Julius Alip (CARD-BDS Manager).

All in all, it was an awesome anniversary. Can’t wait for the next one!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 30th, 2009 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Hapinoy, Innovation+, Social Business Enterprise. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.