That sounds way too sensationalistic, and it probably is. But the drama of that statement is certainly rooted in truth.

Allow me to explain.

Several years ago, I got enamored with the concept of ‘innovation’.

So much so, in fact, that it became a personal buzzword, advocacy, unifying battle-cry.

I read all the books and delved into all of the websites. Innovation and Entrepreneurship. The Innovator’s Dilemma. Innovation : The Five Disciplines. Closing the Innovation Gap. Innovation to the Core. Open Innovation. Innovation Nation. Innovation X. If the book had the word ‘innovation’ in its title (even the sub-title), it had a 90% chance of ending up on my bookshelf. I would get indoctrinated in the religion of IDEO (the Shopping Cart video and the innovation bibles, The Art of Innovation and The Ten Faces of Innovation).

For a time, some really cool friends and I put up Kolektib – an Innovation Hub in the creative hustle-and-bustle of Cubao X. We did Innovation Workshops internally and externally. It was an exquisitely fun time.

Even social entrepreneurship, for me, was a form of innovation – albeit social innovation. Hapinoy and Rags2Riches are expressions of melding social development with business models, a rather revolutionary approach which would certainly qualify as innovating.

I eventually synthesized my knowledge. I wound up conceptualizing, creating, and teaching a class in Ateneo on Innovation. It would tackle the why’s, the what’s, the how’s of the topic. I wanted to transmit the spirit to a next generation of innovators which would try to conquer and/or change the world.

The one line i always wanted my students to remember : Innovate or Die.

But beginning last year, my innovation lens would slowly shift. Not on a different tangent, but rather on a different depth.

I’m significantly more experienced and quite wiser. For all intents and purposes, I’ve changed. But more importantly, the world has changed at a mind-spinning rate – far outstripping my own evolution.

The first decade of the 21st Century was characterized by dizzying change, hyper-competition, unbridled growth – all of the factors that led to an innovation explosion. Globalization was at full-swing, the Internet began to fulfill its promise of changing everything.

And everything seemed possible. Growth was so palpable and reachable, and so businesses began pouncing on the massiveness of the opportunity. Driven by sheer momentum, they just plowed full steam ahead.

An innovation avalanche would ensue.

Innovation and Design consultancies would have a field day. So many new products, services, processes, and business models would emerge. I should know – it’s what I taught :

How Zara had reinvented the supply chain, allowing them to launch new fashion lines at lightning speed.

How the Wii would tackle the Blue Ocean of game consoles, beating the higher-performing Xbox 360 and Playstations by going on a different tangent and tackling non-gamers.

How Procter & Gamble used Open Innovation and launched connect + develop, unleashing a torrent of growth for their brands under AG Lafley’s watch.

More consumers were opening their wallets, and companies were feasting.

But towards the end of the decade, the world would undergo yet another step-change, perhaps an even larger one than the last.

Crises of global proportions would enter the lexicon.

A financial crisis would infect the world over, leading to national economies teetering on the brink. It was a full-blown meltdown and it washed over countries like a worldwide tsunami.

And speaking of tsunamis, the world became a real-life disaster movie. Environmentalists have been banging the alarm bells on the planet for so long, but it’s certainly only in the past few years that climate change has become real to the person on the street. When Typhoon Ondoy hit the Philippines, it was a shock to the system – it dumped one month’s worth of rain in half a day, causing floods in areas we never imagined were possible.

This climate change crisis is of course linked to to the energy crisis – our over-dependence on carbon-based fuels. Generations ago it wasn’t tangible, but now we see just how finite non-renewable energy is. It’s like we’ve got lung cancer and yet ironically still need two packs of smokes a day just to keep on moving.

And while all this was happening, the gap between the rich and the poor continued to widen. The proportion of the world’s population that survives under $2 a day still goes between a third to one-half of the total human race! (depending on which statistics you look at). Without a doubt, the population and poverty crisis continues to rear its ugly head.

And so in the span of a decade, we went from an age of seemingly unbridled growth … and plummeted into an age of uncertainty. An Age of Massively Complex Problems.

And that’s why a nagging feeling in my gut gradually snowballed, until my lens shifted.

I remember some of the projects that were conceptualized in my Innovation Class. A better kind of toothpaste. Refillable packaging for laundry detergents. Heck, even an innovative cigarette that would light without matches. Of course there were some that were more interesting – especially those who were in the social innovation track.

But with all due respect to my former students, it was the teacher who was at fault. We were thinking too small. We were throwing our energies at the wrong things. (just look at my slides)

Power is useless, if misdirected. Same goes for Innovation.

Innovation is good at tackling any problem, but it can be so much greater if it tackled the right ones.

And so I’m drawing a line on the sand, demarcating where my old thinking ends and my new perspective begins :

The only problems worth solving, worth investing your life in, are meaningful ones.

In an Age of Massively Complex Problems, do we really need to design a better toothbrush?

Do we still want to use innovation to drive unbridled growth and overconsumption, for things that people don’t really need but we’d just want them to buy?

Do we want to continue ransacking the planet with novel products that don’t really add anything extraordinary to people’s lives?

I say, that may have its place in the world, but certainly not in mine.

I will invest my time, my resources, my life, in innovation that, frankly, matters.

Meaningful innovation that adds real value to people’s lives, that tackles real problems plaguing individuals, society, and the world.

A lot of Big Problems. A lot of Big Opportunities. A lot of Big Innovations needed.

I call this new evolution of my definition, Innovation(+). Innovation plus, Innovation positive, Innovation with meaning.

The time has come for us to put collective energies into innovations that can create positive differences in people’s lives, for society, and the world at large.

We need platforms for participation; Heck let’s take it a step further as Platforms for Activation – where people are actively engaged in helping things move not just onwards, but upwards.

And so it’s in these specific challenges that I will be investing my energies on :

1. Social Innovations at the Base-of-the-Pyramid
- How can we co-create business models, products, and services that serve essential needs for those that live under $2/day?
- How can we make the poor active participants and co-creators in the common drive to get them out of poverty?

2. Development of Technologies, Products, and Services that Positively Advance the Human Condition
- How can we create new innovations in education, healthcare, energy, and communications that sustainably serve the needs of this generation and the next?
- How do we use innovation and design thinking to tackle everyday problems of society – traffic gridlock, transportation, crime as some examples? (in fact, IDEO has evolved Design Thinking into tackling Big Problems – just look at Open IDEO).
- How can the Big Brands, Big Products, and Big Services reinvent themselves into positively advancing the human condition?

3. Harnessing the Web for Massive Connection, Collaboration, and Change
- As I mentioned earlier – how do we create Platforms for Activation? I can think of no better example than how Iceland recently engaged its citizens to write the constitution.
- How can we use web to either rebuild or create new institutions? Financial institutions, Educational Institutions, Healthcare Institutions, even Governments?

4. A New Kind of Society
- How do we transition a paradigm shift from the traditional economics of GDP into one that measures happiness and prosperity?
- How do we go from unbridled production-consumption-growth into true, sustainable living?
- How do we balance the currents of globalization, localization, and community?

5. Innovating for The Planet
- There’s just no way getting around tackling the Climate Crisis head-on, it’s quite simply the biggest problem that we as a collective species have to contend with.
- In fact, I love what Al Gore writes in his new book/app ‘Our Choice’. In addressing the Climate Crisis, he wants ‘to make the rescue of civilization the central organizing principle of our politics, economics, and action.’

So there. A new personal roadmap, a clearer direction, a manifesto on where I wish Innovation+ will go. Where it will take us, or where we can drive it towards.

One of my all-time favorite quotes is by technologist Alan Kay – “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” Such wise words in an Age of Massively Complex Problems, an age which needs more and more of us to do Innovation(+).

Interestingly enough, a group of students had started a social enterprise idea that for me, showed significant promise. It wasn’t just a concept;  They’ve actually prototyped and run a small-scale pilot as part of the course requirements. In fact, with some further refinement, the enterprise was viable. Sales were already being generated, and I could see how it could evolve into larger things.

You would think that the teacher who guided them through this project would be enthusiastically encouraging the students to pursue the enterprise post-graduation.

But the contrary proved to be true.

The students wanted to pursue the enterprise. The teacher, instead of rallying behind this, actually insisted that they apply for a 9-to-5 job instead. That is the better path to pursue, according to her. The social enterprise would just be too risky.

This teacher, whom I don’t know from Adam, has a class on business and entrepreneurship. Yes, my friends. Entrepreneurship.

Imagine my disappointment when I heard this.

Granted, the teacher might have been thinking that the students would benefit from some years’ experience as an employee. I’d really like to give her the benefit of the doubt.

But from the way it was narrated to me, that might not be the case. The teacher was adamant that the students be practical and go for the safety of employment instead. By the way, it might interest you to know that the teacher isn’t an entrepreneur.

Thankfully, there was one member of the group who adamantly wanted to pursue the enterprise, and did go for it. In that bullheaded decision, I see the seeds of a true entrepreneur being born.

I’m not going to sugarcoat it. That business could very well fail. It IS risky. This could be a very hard road to take.

But entrepreneurship is never about using kid gloves – even when dealing with, well, kids.

You fall, you pick yourself up, you move along. That’s what entrepreneurs do. But it’s important that they actually leaped first.

Entrepreneurship is hard, period. Arguably, social entrepreneurship even more so. But if we don’t encourage people to take the plunge, then we’d pretty much never get anywhere.

Peter Drucker said, “Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.”

We need our schools – and our teachers – to spur more courage, not dampen it.

In this Module, we tackle the qualities of what makes Innovators … well, innovators. And also what we can do to imbibe and emulate that — by discovering our PassionFuel, dabbling in MindJunk, and gaining clarity on our MissionDrive.

HERE’S TO THE CRAZY ONES!

I’m a great fan of Shift Happens, a presentation made by educator Karl Fisch that spread like wildfire around the world – seamlessly blending statistics, infographics, and social media and making it digestible for the 21st Century.

Of course, it was also largely due to the face that xplane, an information design consultancy, took on his original powerpoint, and jazzed it up with an MTV-meets-the-web vibe coupled with a hollywood-ized cinematic soundtrack.

Recently, xplane has released Did You Know? v 4.0 — this time with a special focus on the sweeping, shifting social media landscape and technology convergence. It’s a concise-enough video, considering all the info they were able to cram inside of it; Definitely ripe with statistics that will either leave you dumbfounded at the rate of change, or give you a tease of the huge waves of opportunities that are emerging in front of our very eyes …

THE SOCIAL CHANGE CHALLENGE
PR: PURSUING REFORMS

Keynote Address, 16th National Public Relations Congress
September 10, 2009 Manila Hotel

by Bienvenido F. Nebres, S.J.
President, Ateneo de Manila University

First of all, warmest congratulations to the Public Relations Society of the Philippines as you hold your 16th National Public Relations Congress. Greetings to Butch Raquel, President of PRSP, Barbie Atienza, Chairman of the 16th National Public Relations Congress, the Past Presidents and Officers of the PRSP and other members of the Organizing Committee for the Congress. Thank you for you kind invitation for me to address you on this important topic.

In January of this year, as part of our 150th anniversary celebration, our Sesquicentennial, we had a symposium with Presidents of partner universities around the world on the theme of “Universities on the Frontiers of Change.” In my opening address, I spoke about our own journey in search of how we could really contribute to social reform, to nation-building. The themes of our Sesquicentennial have been Celebrating Excellence, Deepening Spirituality and Building the Nation. I spoke in my address on our search for what really builds the nation.

I traced the growth in understanding of social change and social reform at Ateneo de Manila:
-   In our first 100years, our understanding was that we could contribute to social change by educating good leaders. The words used then was Sapientia et Eloquentia – giving them solid learning and eloquence, the ability to express and communicate well. Together with solid virtues. This was the goal of most universities. If you looked at the vision-mission of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton in the early 20th century, it would be to educate learned and virtuous young men, eventually young women, who would be leaders of their nation. So, the belief was that social change would come if we had learned and good leaders. In some ways, this is still our dominant belief – we keep looking for leaders who will bring about social change.

In the early 1970s, our Jesuit Superior General Fr. Pedro Arrupe challenged us to go further in his famous speech “Men and Women for Others”. He said:

Today our prime educational objective must be to form men-and-women- for-others; men and women who will live not for themselves but for God and his Christ – for the God-man who lived and died for all the world; men and women who cannot even conceive of love of God which does not include love for the least of their neighbors; men and women completely convinced that love of God which does not issue in justice for others is a farce.

Thus in the 1970s, when I was Dean of Ateneo College, we started conscientization, immersion and exposure programs. We developed programs to work with and organize farmers, urban poor, workers. Our theory of social change then was that change would come if, on the one hand, we created organization and capability below among the poor and, on the other hand,  conscientization and responsiveness from the top, from leaders.

In the late 1980s, early 1990s, we went further and began to speak of “Professionals for others” – challenging our students to ask how their professional expertise can contribute to creating a better life for the poor. Our law students now have to do a thesis and they are asked to show how the law can really benefit the poor and marginalized. Our business students are asked in their senior paper to do the same. More to the point for Public Relations Professionals, we ask our students in their senior communications thesis to show both expertise in communications and how their expertise will contribute to social reform and social change.

But as we entered the 1990s, we were faced with the fact that, while our neighbors in East and Southeast Asia, had made great progress in overcoming poverty, the social landscape of the Philippines had not really changed. Poverty remains as entrenched as before. There is a book about the Philippines by an American Southeast Asian specialist, David Timberman, whose title keeps coming back to me. The title is “A Changeless Land” and it comes from a passage in F. Sionil Jose’s, “My Brother, my Executioner”. The book asks: “How could a nation that has gone through so many changes actually have changed so little?” and “Does a mechanism exist to enable peaceful and positive change in the future?” We have had so many elections, martial law, two EDSAs, many changes, but really little change. A Jesuit visitor from Chile told me the other day that he was here 25 years ago to look into housing for the poor in Tondo. He visited Tondo again and he said sadly, “It has not changed.”

Thus, in articulating our vision/mission in 1994, we realized that contributing to “Closing the Poverty Gap” had to become an explicit institutional goal of the Ateneo. It could not be just a consequence of educating good leaders. We had to ask how we, as an institution, were contributing to closing the poverty gap.

We began to understand better what Gunnar Myrdal meant by “soft states.” That at the heart of the unchanging landscape of poverty were weak or soft political, social and economic institutions. We decided that, beyond forming individuals, we had to engage key social institutions. Educating leaders and professionals for others continues to be important, but they will only create effective change if they transform key social institutions.

Let me illustrate this by two stories. One local, one foreign.

In early 2005 after Typhoon Yoyong, Ateneo went to Gabaldon, Nueva Ecija to work with Gawad Kalinga in building homes for those displaced by the landslides. We chose Gabaldon, because our Loyola Mountaineers had been climbing there for over 20 years and had a special affection for Gabaldon. In that work, we met two lady mayors, Mayor Sonia Lorenzo of San Isidro and Mayor Baby Congco of Cabiao. We started working with them on improving their schools with the Ateneo Center for Educational Development, health programs through our Leaders for Health Program, building homes for the poor with Gawad Kalinga. Our School of Government now delivers a Masters in Public Management for several towns in Nueva Ecija.

The story is mainly about Mayor Sonia Lorenzo. She started focusing her efforts on delivering basic services, esp. improving her elementary and high schools, public health by providing PhilHealth for nearly everyone, building homes for the poor with Gawad Kalinga. To achieve this she engaged many partners, local government agencies like the DSWD and the DOH, the private sector. She told us how this work brought about change. “Dati alas 5 lang n.u., nakapila na ang mga tao sa bahay, dala dala ang receta, dahil mayroong maysakit sa pamilya.” Now they no longer line up at her house. They know there is a system with Philhealth and the system works. She has transformed a key institution of health. Similarly with her schools.

In 2007, when she ran for re-election, she decided there would be no miting de avance, no big billboards, etc. She and her leaders would just go around the barangays and engage the people about the basic services program. Her leaders said, “Matatalo tayo.” But she kept faith and in the 2007 elections she won by a landslide.

Beyond that, the town annual income rose from just a couple of million pesos to about 16 million. They moved from a 4th class municipality to a 2nd class. When I asked her how that came about, she said that she learned that if you take care of people’s needs in education and health, they can save, make their businesses and livelihood profitable and be able to pay their taxes.

Lesson in Social Change. The leader transformed key social institutions, which responded to basic needs of people. In turn, the people responded and changed because they saw hope for a better future for themselves and their children. The mayor’s institutional changes were key enablers – enablers for the people to take responsibility for their own lives and for change.

During the Gawad Kalinga Boston summit last June, Mayor Sonia told her story to a room full of CEOs and University leaders at Harvard University and she received a standing ovation. I guess that would be a PR practitioner’s dream – to project a Mayor who had a standing ovation before key leaders at Harvard University .

The second story is from China . I work a lot in mathematics and mathematics education. In a mathematics education conference in Shanghai a few years ago, a good friend, Frederick Leung, gave a paper with the intriguing title: “In books, there are Golden Halls, in books, there are Fair Maidens.” He said this was a song they used to chant as children while skipping their way to school. What did it mean? It told them that by studying hard, some day they may live in a palace and marry a maiden of high standing. What led to this nursery song?

In China, a couple of thousand years ago, an emperor set up a system for choosing civil servants by a meritocracy, not influence or pull. He set up the Imperial Examinations and success in these examinations, heavily in Chinese classics and mathematics, determined future career. I remember being awed visiting the Great Hall in Beijing in 1985, where year after year, the roster of successful examinees was announced.

This allowed even the poorest villagers to have their children aspire to high posts. It changed Chinese culture so that even the poorest villager believed that with hard work and study, his son could one day rise to the top. In the period of a thousand years or so, it has led to something we know very well: the Chinese value for education and hard work as the way to success. I guess the Emperor also had a good PR consultant, since the song “In books, there are Golden Halls, in books there are fair maidens” continues to be sung over a thousand years later.

There is also a story I often tell. Dr. Miren Intal, a social psychologist at Ateneo, told me of an eminent American psychologist who studied countries that came out of poverty. What he did was to look at the stories which children read 30 or more years before the take-off. He wanted to understand what shaped the vision and imagination of the leaders who led the take-off. He theorized that he could find it in the stories they read as children. He found that invariably these stories were stories of courage, of overcoming adversity, of fulfilling hope of a better future. I have been telling this to Jesuit grade schools and high schools and we have a project now at Ateneo de Manila to create such children’s stories. This is led by Christine Bellen, the author of “Batang Rizal.”

You as public relations specialists are, in many ways, dream weavers. The challenge is whether we connect the fulfillment of these dreams to suwerte (winning lotto or something else) or to hard work. Societies where institutions work to fulfill dreams of those who work hard for them are the ones that succeed in social change.

So where does this bring us in terms of what brings about social reform and social change. It does need leadership, whether it is Mayor Sonia Lorenzo or a Chinese Emperor. But it also needs to engage the community and the people and eventually bring about transformation among them. What engages them and transforms them? The leadership instituting reforms that bring about concrete results that show them that with their cooperation and hard work, they can get out of poverty and have hope for a better future. In China , it was that study and hard work would lead to success in the Imperial Examinations and high office. In San Isidro , it was that health and education services would allow them to provide better for their families and have higher aspirations for their children.

Let me move then to how we have been trying to translate this approach of bringing about social change. The first is in improving public education. Just the other day I gave a report of the Presidential Task Force on Education to the President and Cabinet. We face very deep problems in public education. Less than 70% of pupils entering Grade 1 finish grade 6. That translates to over 800,000 children every year who never finish elementary school. The academic scores especially in high school only average around 40%. What future can there be in our knowledge intensive world for someone who has not even finished elementary school?

But it is possible to change. After several years of doing teacher training, training of principals and so forth, the traditional role of universities in education, we decided to work with a group of very poor elementary schools and do whatever was needed to improve them. We started with four very large and very poor elementary schools in a very poor area near us, Payatas, which is the garbage dumpsite for Quezon City .

I often illustrate this work through the example of one school, Lupang Pangako, which is right beside the dumpsite. We started working with Lupang Pangako in 2002. There is a very powerful video of the situation there in 2003, in the television program of Mike Enriquez, “Imbestigador.” In that video you see a large warehouse, divided into about 9 classrooms, each with over 80 pupils. Very noisy, leaking roofs, etc. The school had 3 sessions a day, 6 to 10 am, 10 to 2 am, 2 to 6 pm to accommodate 3,800 students. They were number 97 out of 98 schools in Quezon City .

Through the leadership of the principal and our help in bringing the community together to set goals, do strategic planning and commit to reform, the situation has completely changed in 2008. They now have new schoolbuildings, courtesy of Mayor Belmonte, only two sessions a day, a morning and afternoon session. Class size is 50 students. Most important is that their academic performance improved so much, that from rank 97 in 2003, they were rank 4 in 2008.

What was the process followed in bringing about this change? In 1994 Ateneo de Manila did a study for the DepEd to answer the question: “What differentiates a high-performing elementary school from a low-performing one, given the same socio-economic conditions?”  We did a very large statistical study. Two variables emerged: the  leadership of principal and the support of community. In Lupang Pangako, we had a very good principal. We worked with him to engage the community. In their strategic planning, when we got to what goals they would set for the next 3 years, he said, “We will be in the top 20 (from 97) in 3 years.” Pinagtawanan siya. But in 2 years they were number 19 and now they are in the top 10.

Why do I cite public elementary and high school education as a key area of social reform and social change? Why not fiscal policy or foreign direct investments or other economic policies?  In the Philippines , we usually focus on economic and fiscal policy or politics as key to change. But a Nobel-Prize Economist, Amartya Sen, has said that in his 30 years of study of countries that have come out of poverty and carried out successful social reform and social change, the key areas these countries focused on and transformed were basic education and basic health. He explains why these are more fundamental. You can look at poverty, he says, as a lack of resources. Kulang sa pera, kulang sa oportunidad. So you focus on economic variables. But, he says, there is a deeper poverty, the poverty of capability. Kulang sa kakayahan. Education and health are the keys to building capability. One can probably understand this best negatively. You can go to a person or a community and offer money or the opportunity for a job. Pero, kung walang pinag-aralan o may TB, they will not be able to take the opportunity. Key to social change out of poverty is to build the capability of our people and this comes through basic education and public health. Of course, we saw this verified in practice in San Isidro.

There are other stories I could tell you. We have young graduates of our business programs creating social enterprises for the poor:

Among the best known are Hapinoy, led by Bam Aquino and Mark Ruiz among others. They are working to create something like a 7-11 chain of sari-sari stores, through branding, strong partnerships with suppliers, fiscal discipline, product management, etc. PRSP might consider working with them on their marketing and branding.

The other is Rags2Riches, where Bam, Mark, Reese Fernandez and other young people work with poor women of Payatas, who used to make just a peso or so, from rugs out recycled cloth – to now making from this same recycled cloth, designer bags, etc., and selling them for 500 pesos or more. You might wish to join their next product launch, RIIR ARANAZ fall-holiday launch at Powerplant on Sept 28, 6 pm.

What makes these socially transforming ventures for the poor succeed is the ability of these young leaders to create opportunity – access to markets, selection of products, – and also to engage the poor community to transform themselves (product quality, discipline, etc.)
So where do PR professionals come in. All social change and social transformation needs good communications. Communications with the key players, principal with teachers, with students, with parents; with key supporters, with the mayor, the DepEd. For Hapinoy, communications with the sari-sari store owners, with the suppliers, with the markets.

I invite you to look around and choose some of the movements for change:
- Work with public education
- With public health
- With Gawad Kalinga
- With social enterprise, like HAPINOY or Rags2Riches

They all have important communication needs.

If you are invited to do PR work for the candidates for the coming elections, contribute to shaping a platform that focuses on policies and actions that will bring about social change: basic services like education and health, livelihood, etc. Get the candidate to really engage the community.

May I ask you in particular to invite them to spend time with an elementary school or two. Let me tell you what you will discover when you do so.

A few Christmases ago, we were asked by one of the schools we work with in Payatas if we could provide Christmas food packs for the 400 poorest families in the school. We prepared food packs worth just 100 pesos. When I joined to distribute the food packs, I was stunned when the teacher said that it would last a family of 5, 3 days. They only eat once a day. I actually felt rather guilty about how little it was we were giving. Still, one mother came up to me and said, “Sana bigyan kayo ng Diyos ng mahabang buhay, para marami pa ang inyong matutulungan.”

As we worked more closely with the schools and delved into the reasons for absences, we found that so many of them had terrible toothaches, because of bad teeth.

We talked to the children who were non-readers and considered hopeless by the teachers. We found out that they could not see the blackboard. They needed eyeglasses. We got donations for eyeglasses and you can’t imagine the joy of the children now that they can finally see.

They have only a couple of toilets for thousands of children and so gastro-intestinal illnesses and UTI are frequent among them.
On the other hand, you find that if you engage the mayors, barangay captains, parents, etc., they find that they have a shared dream, which is to provide a better future for their children. I have participated in such meetings in Maguindanao and found that Christians, Muslims, Tirurays all share the same dream for a better future for their children. They say, “We know we ourselves will not  be able to get out of poverty. But we will do all we can for our children.” And mayors and barangay captains begin to realize that people will support them, elect them, if they help them fulfill these dreams.

The public elementary school is a place where you learn a lot about your community.

You also learn when you engage the principal, teachers and parents  — that they have a shared dream: a better future for their children. It is a very powerful dream. And if you can show them that you will fulfill that dream, they will vote for you.

To end then: Social Change will come

- When we make key social institutions work (like public education, public health, job creation)
- To meet people’s basic needs
- And reward hard work
- And show that even the poorest can dream and achieve their dreams
- If they keep faith, work hard, and persevere.

PRSP, as a society of public relations professionals, can do much to shape our image and culture of social change.

Thank you very much and good morning.

I was in the process of organizing and rationalizing my bookshelf last night.

As is the usual case, my geek-self couldn’t help but start cataloging into a database the latest iteration of my library.

And so I started typing away in a Google Docs spreadsheet so that the list would be cloud-accessible.

But then memory struck, and I recalled that I had signed up for a web-based service called Shelfari, a library manager of sorts. So I drew up the web page, and lo and behold my account was still blessedly active.

What is Shelfari? To copy-and-paste their website’s about us section :

Based in Seattle, Shelfari introduces readers to our global community of book lovers and encourages them to share their literary inclinations and passions with peers, friends, and total strangers (for now). Shelfari is a gathering place for authors, aspiring authors, publishers, and readers, and has many tools and features to help these groups connect with each other in a fun and engaging way. Our mission is to enhance the experience of reading by connecting readers in meaningful conversations about the published word.

Shelfari’s members:

• Build virtual bookshelves to express themselves to their friends and to the world
• Discover books that are popular in their trusted circles of friends
• Influence peers by rating and discussing books online
• Discover and learn from people with similar reading tastes
• Participate in online book groups to further explore literature and share ideas
• Interact with and learn from authors

I initially hesitated — how can this be this website be universally applicable to my library management needs?

And so I started using it.

And as I started effortlessly adding up book after book after book, intuitively adding metadata – i’ve read it, i plan to read it; 1 to 5 star-based ratings; i have it/i plan to buy; user-generated reviews; tagging – i realized just how user-friendly this service was.

But the transition from user-friendly to downright useful becomes apparent with the site’s social networking features.

Diving into friends’ and groups’ respective library shelves is a fun, time-wasting breeze. It’s a foray into a veritable treasure trove of books and titles just waiting to be discovered, as aligned to your unique and particular interests. Think of it as social bookmarking, but this time literally “book”-marking. And this process of discovery then leads to new books for future purchase and consumption. No wonder Amazon.com bought Shelfari last August 2008.

But of course, back to the initial intention that got me to rediscover Shelfari – Library Database Management.

Other people might say that this is just an obsessive-compulsive impulse being satiated, and they may be right. But the truth is I really don’t care. Shelfari is manna from heaven in maintaining an online database of my books, presented in a visual manner that is just intuitive and appealing (although I wish that I could organize the books into sections/categories).

Under the span of an hour, I was able to find my books and fill up my Shelfari library shelf and – voila! – my physical library had become represented, virtually.

Now if only they can link my shelf into Stanza and/or Zinio Reader, that would most certainly close the loop

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Let’s connect on Shelfari here.

Coming off the heels of our 6th WhyNot?Forum — Why Not Be True? Tribute to Pinoy Subculture Tribes, the WhyNuts thought through the theme for 7.0. Our minds were swimming around science, futurism, and heroism – until we decided to coincide our schedule with the August 21 death anniversary of national hero Ninoy Aquino. That decision settled it. From a back-to-the-roots journey into geek-dom and subculture, we were ready to unashamedly wear our nationalistic hearts on our sleeves again.

Bam melded our thoughts and proposed to talk about ‘the Filipino for the 21st Century’ – a Reimagined Filipino if you will – and it was a theme that the group gravitated towards immediately. To deepen our thinking, we underwent a process to discuss the theme in length, inviting Rapa Lopa (who would eventually be a speaker), Lino Rivera, and former WhyNot? speaker Floy Quintos to brainstorm. The output of that session eventually gave birth to WhyNot?Forum 7.0 :

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Fast forward to August 22 : WhyNot?Forum 7.0 becomes another memorable milestone in the history of WhyNot?Forums.

In true WN?F fashion, we looked for a venue that could be a statement on the theme itself. Thus, we looked for a space that was rich in Filipino heritage and culture, and yet at the same time was progressive and forward-looking. For us, the Ayala Museum was the perfect space. And thankfully, with the help of Bill Luz from the Ayala Foundation, we were able to get it.

WhyNot?Forum 7.0 @ the Ayala Museum Lobby

As early as 2:30pm, people promptly started trickling in. By 3pm, the venue had been filled-up and more seats needed to be provided. The crowd would eventually balloon to more than 200 – composed of  young professionals, students, academicians, business leaders, development workers, NGO’s, executives, even children – taking up the entire floor area venue.

Bam Aquino, WhyNut and our in-house host, then introduced WhyNot?Forum 7.0′s theme, explaining how the WhyNuts had decided to coincide this special WN?F with the death anniversary of his uncle, National Hero Ninoy Aquino. He shared that it was our own way to also contribute to the conversation on positive change for the country.

WhyNut Bam Aquino introduces ReimagiNATION to a Jampacked Crowd @ the Ayala Museum

After the snappy introduction, the program immediately dove into action. Paco Sandejas – Stanford PhD holder, Venture Capitalist, and Brain Gain Network founder – took to the stage to give the first talk of the forum. He proceeded to talk about his topic – a question on Why Outbound, Not Homebound; or in his own words, “Should I Stay Or Should I Go?”.

Paco narrated his experiences of taking higher studies in the US, but eventually deciding to make a bid to go back to the Philippines and set-up shop, despite the unideal local situation. He explains possible reasons for returning – whether it be economics, family, even opportunity (Being a Small Fish in a Big Pond vs Being a Big Fish vs a Small Pond).

He also shares his view that we should understand Filipinos who decide to go abroad and try their luck out in the great blue yonder. Aside from the fact that we don’t understand his or her personal circumstances, it’s also good for the country because Filipinos out there are learning and working at a global level. After all, the reality of the world today is that competition for jobs is across geographies and nationalities, and not just with fellow Filipinos.

He then ends by sharing his online platform for collaboration across all Filipinos — whether they be based in the Philippines or abroad. This is the aptly-named Brain Gain Network which can hopefully be an engine to build, in his own words, Philippines 2.0.

Paco Sandejas, PhD of BrainGain Network of NarraVC

Speaker #2 is a first for WhyNot?Forum. A military officer, Major Dennis Eclarin of the Philippine Army captivated the audience by showing up in full uniform. Armed with the topic Renegades, Not Robots – Major Eclarin debunks all stereotypes and biases we  normally have towards military officers. Military should not be a concern at all, he explains; the Philippine Army now simply works behind the scenes – quietly under the radar – in order to serve the general citizenry.

A progressive nationalist, Dennis relayed that his experiences in military service — even in the frontlines of actual battle and conflict — have made him seek  better ways to help move the country forward. This better way, he then posits, can be fueled by a new kind of renegade-ism, which he then redefines by contrasting it against robot-ism (Nation-Building vs Managing Systems; Leaders of Characters vs Soul-less Machines; Free Thinkers vs Mindless Followers). For him, renegade-ism is not rebellion; On the contrary,  it is nation-building by working with stakeholders and negotiating within the system.

He then gives a twist to Why Not by sharing snippets of a new book that he’s currently authoring, entitled “What If?”. Instead of the usual Why Not? Questions, he asks What If”s? These ‘What If”s would be : fighting for a middle force, championing unity of effort, building a strong (democratic) state, crafting a distinctively pro-business vision (yes, a capitalist-friendly soldier!), tapping Filipinos abroad, and forming a corps of dynamic leaders.

Major Dennis Eclarin of the Philippine Army

After the incendiary talk of Major Eclarin, Rep. Risa Hontiveros-Baraquel provides a tangential perspective, asking “Why Not A Nation of Activists and an Activist State?”.

In her calm yet firm manner, Risa shares her thoughts on how a new take on activism (not simply the traditional association of take-to-the-streets rallying) can provide hope in effecting true change in the country. In fact, the moment one wonders if things ‘can be better’, that person becomes what Risa calls “a closet advocate”. If this ‘closet advocacy’ is then taken collectively and acted upon – transitioning from advocacy into activism – then perhaps this can result in a true revolution from below. And as this revolution builds, so too does the empowerment of the citizenry.

But this does not only apply to a revolution from below. Being in government, Risa also shares how activism can play a role from that perspective. For her, activists within government working on empowering policies will lead into societal transformation. The change this effects can be both systemic and institutional.

Ultimately, she shares a vision of a nation of activists, building an activist state.

Rep. Risa Hontiveros-Baraquel

Rapa Lopa – Executive Director of the Benigno Aquino Foundation, Chairman of MicroVentures, and Executive Assistant to as well as nephew of President Corazon Cojuangco Aquino – became an emotional high-point for the forum.

With his beloved Auntie Cory’s passing just a few weeks earlier – an event that would dramatically envelop the whole Philippines in mourning, respect, and love – Rapa shared his thoughts and reflections on her life. Rapa talks about his belief that the story of Tita Cory is interwoven with the story of his Tito Ninoy; In fact, it’s not just any story, but rather a very powerful and moving love story. The couple became each other’s pillars of strength, allowing them to endure trials such as Tito Ninoy’s unlawful imprisonment, and eventually his ultimate sacrifice of dying for the country.

But Rapa’s insight is this : LOVE was the central theme that fueled his Tito Ninoy and Tita Cory. It was love for each other. It was love for God. And this love became real – as it translated into love for country, for the Philippines, for the Filipino. As Rapa asked early on in his talk : Is the Filipino Worth Living and Dying For? And the lives of his uncle and his aunt were testaments that the answer is a resounding yes.

He then shares how working with his Tita Cory has moved him into working for a better country, and that has shaped the people he has chosen to work with today; MicroVentures, a microfinancing business development services company working with the poorest of the poor; iamninoy runners; Philippine Stagers Association (for Ako Si Ninoy musical); and his efforts on “giving multiplied” – harnessing the power of the internet to find help for those who need it.

With a solemn silence not heard since Mr. Pagsi’s talk in WhyNot?Forum 3.0, Rapa then ends by asking young children from the audience what their dreams were, what they wanted to be when they grew up. And he parts by saying that these children are the future – they are the Filipinos that are worth living and dying for.

Benigno Aquino Foundation Executive Director, MicroVentures Chairman, and Tita Cory’s Nephew Rapa Lopa

The last speaker for WhyNot?Forum was another new addition to the mix.

Howie Severino – renowned journalist – shared his thoughts not with a prepared speech, but rather with an extemporaneous spiel, as a reactor.

Able to simultaneously juggle insight, humor, and heart, he provided a sharp recap of the key points of each speaker – at times distilling and enriching what each speaker had tackled in his or her respective talk.

It would prove to be a fruitful exercise, as Howie was able to provide a unity of perspective across the different topics tackled, painting a distinct yet unified picture of what had transpired that afternoon. One particular theme that Howie captured is that the speakers provide us a glimpse of who the Filipino can be, not just who he is.

A First for WhyNot : A Reactor c/o Journalist Howie Severino

All-in-all, it was another powerful and moving WhyNot?Forum — filled with several a-ha! ideas, points of laughter, and heart-rending moments.

In a conversation on reimagining the new Filipino, we realized that we may indeed be a ‘work-in-progress’, but a clear vision of who we can still be is what should capture our imagination. To echo Risa Hontiveros-Baraquel, “reimagination is the beginning of hope.”

WhyNuts L-R : Timi Gomez, Bam Aquino, Carlo Calimon, Rapa Lopa, Jan Chavez-Arceo, Angeli Ko, Mark Ruiz, Lino Rivera

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As we wait for the official videos to be up in a few weeks, here is a teaser video on some highlights of 7.0 :

To end, WhyNot?Forum would like to give a very special thanks to its partners : OneAsiaTouchpoint, DVTech, and HavocDigital; and special sponsors for WhyNot?Forum 7.0 Ayala Museum, Signum, Yakult, and Rene Barbier.

Think New Thoughts. Share Big Dreams. Do Brave Things
The WhyNot?Forum : Inspiring Filipino Ingenuity
www.whynotforum.com

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So last August 12 I get this message in my Facebook Inbox :

As a quick background, Noey is the 7-year old daughter of a good friend, Ina Silva.

As I looked at her message, I immediately said to myself, “How can I resist such an invitation?”. And so without a shred of hesitation I RSVP’d “YES” to this appointment. Reese reads the message, gushes, and immediately says that come hell or high water she would also join.

And so on August 15 we have a meeting with this 7-year-old Earthsaver.

Lo and behold, she had actually prepared a Powerpoint (!) According to Ina, Noey had put it all together by herself, even using photoshop for some of the images. It actually got me wondering, what was I able to do when I was her age??

The powerpoint is absolutely priceless! And so just to share with the world, here it is :

Now, please go back again to Slide #3. Under “What It Will Look Like”, the second line reads “I will draw it on the board”.

And so Noey then literally proceeds to draw her mock-up website on a blackboard that she had diligently prepared :

We were floored speechless.

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Before our meeting with Noey, I drove (4) hours from Batangas (aggravated by unreasonable traffic in SLEX) to bring social enterprise students to Hapinoy. I had been awake since 5 am, relatively exhausted, and almost cranky.

But Noey’s personality and presentation absolutely energized me.

This is who I hope the future generation will look like, ladies and gentlemen :

Earthsavers who are starting young (all of 7 years old!); technologically-savvy (facebook-user, photoshopped powerpoint presentation); collaborative (invited stakeholders to brainstorm); excellent skills of selling and persuasion; and most importantly, the right heart and attitude (it’s almost impossible not to love “I want to make this website because I want to help recycle and I want to help save trees and the world.”)

If we can figure out a way to raise our children to be like Noey, we just might wake up to a brighter world.

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postscript : so watch out for Noey’s website! I think the plan is to launch it this December