repost from http://asiasociety.org/policy-politics/asia-21/changemakers-wanted-philippines-21-class-2010

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2010 is a year for change. As the country elects local and national officials who will lead our government, Asia Society-Philippines honors dynamic individuals who are at the forefront of change in their respective fields, through the Philippines 21 Young Leaders Initiative. A flagship program of Asia Society-Philippines, the Philippines 21 Young Leaders Initiative aims to develop a nationwide, multi-sectoral network of changemakers to meet, educate and inspire each other; collaborate and share ideas on public service and other meaningful initiatives, and build relationships of trust and understanding.

Nominees must be between 25-40 years old, of Filipino citizenship, and have substantial leadership experience in their chosen field, including but not limited to the following: academe, business, civil society, media, arts and culture, military, and government. Prospective Philippines 21 Fellows must also demonstrate a commitment to devote time and effort to achieve the goals and projects set by their Class.

Upon selection as Philippines 21 Fellows, the Class of 2010 will convene at a two-day forum where they will engage in roundtable discussions on issues concerning the Philippines and the Asia Pacific region, in preparation for their participation in the international program, with the ultimate goal of developing projects to address these issues. The annual Forum is held in the last week of August.

Philippines 21 Fellows serve as the country’s official delegation to the Asia 21 Young Leaders Summit, organized annually by Asia Society’s New York headquarters. This year’s Summit, scheduled for November in Jakarta, will bring together some 200 of the most dynamic next generation leaders from Asia and the United States.

The 2010 Fellows join an illustrious roster of Fellows such as the eminent DNA scientist Cora de Ungria, award-winning travel blogger Ivan Henares, social innovator Mark Ruiz, IT and gaming entrepreneur Enrique Gonzalez, and CNN Hero of the Year Efren Peñaflorida, Jr.

Nomination forms may be requested from the Philippines 21 Secretariat via email at philippines21@gmail.com or patriciav@asiasociety.org.ph. Deadline for nominations is on May 31, 2010. For sponsorship opportunities and other inquiries, please call Patricia Vega at (632)7524374. Shortlisted candidates will be notified by mid-June.

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Sandwiched amidst lighter conversation was a topic that landed on the dinner table :

What country’s model of development can the Philippines emulate?

Now, I’m an entrepreneur, not an economist; But I guess my opinionated self can’t help but throw in my own two cents on this personally-fascinating topic.

The angle that really fascinates me, though, goes beyond the “Should the Philippines follow the US, India, Japan, or South Korea model of economic progress?” discussion. Now while I think that topic is a critically important conversation, I think I’ll save my thoughts on that for another blog. (My quick answer: an intersection of India and South Korea.)

For me, the angle I want to explore begins with clarifying the dichotomy between Developed vs. Developing Countries.

A quick search on slideshare gives us a quick resource :

Now, this is far from a technical, scientific explanation of the difference in definitions; But it does give us a flavor of the general bias.

If anything, it reinforces that Development is something that every country must aspire for. It gets populations out of poverty and improves a nation’s way of life.

But while I generally agree that Developed Countries have shown ‘The Way’ for those still ‘Developing’, I for one don’t accept that we have to take their ‘Roadmaps for Development’ lock, stock, and barrel.

Why?

For the simple reason that the end result – their version of development – is not something embraceable in its entirety.

Yes, Developed Countries have the highest GDPs per capita, while Developing Countries have most of its people living under $2 a day.

Yes, Developed Countries have infrastructure. Technology. Military might. And products that Developing Countries want.

But they sure as heck have also tons of baggage that I wouldn’t touch with a country-wide pole : Environmental degradation. Unhappy populaces. Mountains of debt driven by unbridled consumerism.

Corny as it sounds … development … doesn’t always equal … happiness.

Let me be clear : this Developing-Developed dichotomy isn’t a West vs East debate. Even Developed Asian economies experience the same issues. If either China or India mirror US development with its patterns of consumption and addiction to oil, climate change will accelerate at disaster-movie-proportions.

So, for me, the heart of the matter is rethinking a new model of development – one that goes beyond what we have normally laid it out to be.

My book of the moment is The Economics of Happiness : Building Genuine Wealth by Mark Anielski, and it has greatly influenced the thinking I have on the subject.

The book urges its readers to go beyond traditional measures of economic development – e.g. our fixation on GDP – and expand the scope to other measures that would result in Genuine Wealth. Anielski’s philosophy is that Genuine Wealth is based on five capital assets: human (duh, people), social (strength of relationships with each other), natural (gifts from nature e.g. forests, natural gas, mineral resources), built (what we’ve made e.g. equipment, factories, tools), and financial (money!) – and this becomes the foundation for an economic model of well-being and prosperity. Of Happiness.

I know this is mostly touchy-feely, but I think we have to start becoming more comfortable with this new reality. After all, the world that’s emerging is the fuzziest that it’s ever been. The intangibles are seamlessly meshing with the tangibles in entirely new, surprising ways.

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So, going back to the Philippines, and what we can – and should – aspire for from development?

We have to grab the issues of poverty and corruption by the horns, bare minimum. Let’s not even talk about happiness economics if people don’t even get to eat three times a day, brought about by the absolute excess of those in power. The first issue requires traditional economic development that brings financial security to people; The second requires a radical new inculturation and cleansing of government.

But beyond solving the poverty-corruption conundrum, we also have to wrap our heads around the fact that The Filipino Dream shouldn’t just be financial security and purely materialistic pursuits.  Developed economies have shown that this kind of mentality can lead to unbridled consumption, a breakdown in values, and environmental degradation. So as we explore the hard economics, we also have to grapple with the socio-cultural approach. We need to change our thinking, what we measure, and how we go about things.

To end, one of the few silver linings of being a laggard is that you see what has befallen those ahead of you – both the good and the bad. The Philippines can emulate most of what is good from those that have Developed. But we have the singular, prime opportunity to avoid the Bad. Let’s not waste this opportunity.

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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.

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Before anything else, let go of your easily-prickable Pinoy pride for 15 minutes and read (or re-read) Nick Joaquin’s A Heritage of Smallness.

In this influential essay, the one-time National Artist for Literature holds up a mirror to the Filipino Soul and eschews our love affair with all things small :

“Society for the Filipino is a small rowboat: the barangay. Geography for the Filipino is a small locality: the barrio. History for the Filipino is a small vague saying: matanda pa kay mahoma, noong peacetime. Enterprise for the Filipino is a small stall: the sari-sari. Industry and production for the Filipino are the small immediate searchings of each day: isang kahig, isang tuka. And commerce for the Filipino is the smallest degree of retail: the tingi.”

He further builds his case, noting the Philippine aversion of going for big, bold risks.

Whereas other countries have the grandeur of millenia-old pyramids, colloseums, or castles, our landscape reveals … invisible traces of the nipa hut, obliterated in months and years, not centuries.

This seeming absence of ambition in our DNA is a reinforcement of Joaquin’s three theories :

“First: that the Filipino works best on small scale–tiny figurines, small pots, filigree work in gold or silver, decorative arabesques. The deduction here is that we feel adequate to the challenge of the small, but are cowed by the challenge of the big.

Second: that the Filipino chooses to work in soft easy materials–clay, molten metal, tree searching has failed to turn up anything really monumental in hardstone. Even carabao horn, an obvious material for native craftsmen, has not been used to any extent remotely comparable to the use of ivory in the ivory countries. The deduction here is that we feel equal to the materials that yield but evade the challenge of materials that resist.

Third: that having mastered a material, craft or product, we tend to rut in it and don’t move on to a next phase, a larger development, based on what we have learned. In fact, we instantly lay down even what mastery we already posses when confronted by a challenge from outside of something more masterly, instead of being provoked to develop by the threat of competition.”

While there’s most certainly truth in this – denial would only be delusional and unproductive – it’s time to reframe Joaquin’s thoughts and put them in a new historical perspective; Most especially since this so-called heritage of smallness is a jiu-jitsu move whose time, I believe, has finally come.

The transformation spurred by the Industrial Revolution saw unprecedented growth and scale driven by cookie-cutter replication;  This great leap forward was facilitated by large-scale organizations and systems : huge industrial factories and their assembly lines, massive one-size-fits-all educational systems, sprawling country-wide infrastructure – all supported by financial institutions that both oiled and churned the giant wheels of commerce.

Just consider the following examples :

The tri-media attack of Television, Radio, and Print became national – even global – platforms, easily influencing and swaying popular opinion at a massive scale.

Big Business got bigger, while the small guys got smaller. The latter would eventually became roadkill for the ever-burgeoning class of multinational corporations : Wal-Mart dries up the Neighborhood Mom & Pops, Starbucks engulfs the local coffee shops, Barnes and Noble kills the community-based bookstores.

The so-called First World Countries’ GDP’s would balloon and dwarf those in the Third World at mind-boggling ratios. These countries even formed an Industrialized Nations’ Club called the G8 – with their collective financial institutions pretty-much dictating the pace of the World Economy.

But something peculiar happened at the turn of the century.

The large institutions started teetering, and are now on their way into becoming dinosaur-obsolete – their 20th century innards simply being torn apart by 21st Century Realities.

The seemingly impenetrable consolidation of media became oh-so-vulnerable. Professionally produced shows on Television compete with amateurish two-minute antics on YouTube; Internet radio is replacing the radio station as we know it; And every week we extol eulogies on yet another magazine and/or newspaper’s death, as they become replaced by blogs, websites, and online forums.

Even Big Businesses are in quite a disarray. Wal-Mart survives through its ongoing reinvention; Starbucks is now buckling under its own weight – in fact, its new experiments are going community-based as unbranded local shops; Amazon.com and a myriad of niche online booksellers continues to threaten the very economics of brick-and-mortar stores. And don’t get me started on the really easy pickings, The Banks That Were Too Big To Fail, But Did.

On that note, the Global Financial Crisis of ’08-’09 swept across the industrialized nations – their financial institutions becoming a worldwide domino of economic disaster. Tackling this dangerous web was no longer something that the G8 could address in isolation, and so to deal with it they had to involve an expanded group, the G20.

The most-developed, largest countries which just a decade ago seemed invulnerable flirted with disaster and economic depression.

This breakdown in large 20th century institutions certainly has me thinking : maybe Being Big isn’t that – pun intended – big a deal anymore.

From 2010 onwards, maybe it’s time to revisit the other side of the spatial spectrum and get reaquainted with the virtues of smallness.

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It’s no secret that The Rise of Smallness is being fueled by the Internet’s overarching disruptive shadow. Call it what you will – Wikinomics, The Groundswell, The Long Tail, an Army of Davids – the fact is that no other time in history has power been so democratized and redistributed – from multinational companies into a mosaic of startups; from large institutions into the hands of collective individuals.

Indulge me now by sharing with you Exhibits A & B  (both hailing from the same source : uber-brain-food magazine, Wired’s Issue 17.06 – a major, major influence on my thinking with regards to this matter).

Exhibit A is the article, The New New Economy : More Startups, Fewer Giants, Infinite Opportunity -  which showcases the decline in number of the Megacorporations and the viral proliferation of an Ecosystem of Startups.

Exhibit B is more a mindbend, if you will.  Kevin Kelly talks about The New Socialism : Global Collectivist Society is Coming Online – and this is where it makes the leap from mildly interesting to extremely interesting.

Because the secret sauce isn’t really in The Small per se; it’s the aggregation of what I can only call as ‘The Many-Small’ into an almost sentient-network, mimicking swarm intelligence.  And so it’s not just the empowered individual which is the focus of the matter, but rather the groups of individuals bound together, moving from Web 2.0 Guru Clay Shirky‘s hierarchy of sharing, cooperation, collaboration, and collective action.

What does this all have to do with the Philippines?

Because for better or for worse, Nick Joaquin is absolutely right. We are indeed a nation of smallness, divided across a myriad of 7,107 islands.

From sari-sari stores to barangays, from nipa huts to sachets, from farming small plots of land to microfinancing – it is the small that dominates the Filipino landscape.

But if we mirror the Internet model, then we can arrive at the logical conclusion that we’re sitting on a goldmine. And it’s not in The Small. It’s in harnessing The Many-Small.

Our work in Hapinoy is an extremely relevant example to the thinking here. The smallest, minutest unit of retail – the humble sari-sari store – by far dominates the number of retail outlets in the country. While there may be a few thousand supermarkets and groceries nationwide, there are almost 700,000 sari-sari stores sprawling every nook and cranny of the archipelago. 700,000! Numerically, that’s more than 90% of all retail.

So individually, the sari-sari store is too micro to make a dent in the universe. But as a Hapinoy network, the aggregation and alignment of hundreds of thousands of sari-sari stores represents a massively untapped economic opportunity. It’s most definitely not Wal-Mart, but it is a powerful force in its own right.

What makes this model more resilient is that its not solely reliant on a centralized nervous system. Close one Big Box Hypermarket and your business goes under; Close a couple of hundred sari-sari stores and you’ve got an equal number of stores that can willingly take its place. It’s self-healing on the fringes, with a high tolerance for fallouts.

Now extend this Hapinoy model into other Filipino Many-Small realities.

Micro-Businesses.

Barangays.

Public Schools.

Agricultural Plots of Land.

Seven. Thousand. One Hundred. Seven. Islands.

And then add layers of technology to mesh them together – wireless networks, mobile communications, the web as a platform – and the possibilities just effortlessly, exponentially grow.

Let me make it clear that this I am not proposing mere consolidation; The model is hinged on networking and connection. Every point in the mesh retains its individuality – every Hapinoy Store retains its freedom and ownership – it can link and de-link with the chain. But whenever it is plugged-in, then it benefits from the power of the unified group.

—

To end, the challenge of Nick Joaquin wasn’t only in the Filipino’s limited capacity of churning out small things; It was also very much a commentary on the smallness of our thinking – of our lack of ambition, of grandness, of boldness.

But just because we’ve got small things doesn’t mean we have to think small.

The fact of the matter is that we probably won’t be building grand pyramids anytime soon;

But the good news is that we might not even have to.

We can embrace our heritage of smallness;

We can embrace the small things this heritage has given us.

Because at this point in history, we can make enormously gigantically big things out of them.

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Last weekend, Reese Fernandez – President of Rags2Riches, Inc and my other/better half – conducted a transition workshop with the Rags2Riches Cooperative’s Board of Directors. The main content of the workshop was – and stay with me here – finance and managerial accounting.

To appreciate the concept on why it’s a transition, one has to understand first our philosophy and business model.

I’ve often said that the easiest thing Rags2Riches could have done – in order to impact the community – was to have set-up a Rags2Riches factory and hire the Payatas Nanays as laborers. The Nanays would have ended up with a production area, they would clock-in time in/time out from 9-to-5, get decent wages, and live a slightly more financially secure life.

It would have made things absolutely simpler than our complex arrangement right now — the Nanays as part-owners/shareholders of Rags2Riches Inc., and also fully owning – independently – Rags2Riches cooperative. In fact, it would also make things simpler on the business and production side — if the Nanays were hired employees, then we could demand specific work-hours, impose targets, and let all hell break loose if production wasn’t up to speed – quite unlike the current experience wherein production and time commitments are continuing negotiations.

But mere employment, strictly speaking, wasn’t – and isn’t – the goal of Rags2Riches.

It’s about a psychological/cultural upheaval; A directed transition from dependence, patronage, and entitlement – into independence, participatory equality, and empowerment.

And this is something that will only happen if there’s a conscious movement to the community having, owning, and running their own business. And this will only take form once the community becomes their own Rags2Riches cooperative. It’s a necessary, albeit potentially difficult, step.

This is a much harder route to take, but one that we feel is more sustainable and long-term; After all, this is what differentiates us as a social business enterprise as opposed to a traditional business.

Through time and experiences of success, the community – through running their own business – will discover self-confidence and a can-do attitude. And that paradigm shift leads to a luxury a lot of people take for granted — the belief that you can indeed control your own destiny.

When this happens – this psychological shift towards empowerment – the community’s culture fundamentally changes. And this, we believe, is the true goal and challenge. It’s not just about putting more money in marginalized communities’ pockets (although indeed, providing livelihood is an undeniably important factor), it’s really about working with the community so that they can eventually stand on their own two feet.

And so, this leads us to Rags2Riches Inc’s business model.

Other schools of thought position the social entrepreneur’s philosophy as making oneself obsolete. Find a social problem, come up with an innovative solution, disappear, and move on to the next problem. While I can imagine how this would be true for certain cases – climate change, human trafficking, spousal abuse, prostitution, to name a few – our particular context in Rags2Riches (and indeed, Hapinoy) points us towards a difference perspective. Given that we’re in livelihood, we see an ongoing business relationship with the community, even – and actually, most especially – after they have been set-up into their own cooperative.

This is the business model we’re looking at :

What we’ve essentially done is look at the entire value chain, and ask ourselves fundamental questions : Which portions of the chain would the community of Nanays be best at, that we at R2R inc wouldn’t be able to touch with a ten-inch pole? And what could R2R inc be potentially best at that could deliver value to the R2R cooperative?

Which leaves us with this equation : R2R Cooperative would focus on production, while R2R inc would focus on product design & development and marketing & sales, thus creating a configuration that would allow for a continuing business relationship. A business partnership between equals.

How do we ensure it is indeed a partnership of equals?

Well, here’s a peculiar fact – the R2R cooperative is not exclusively tied to R2R inc – meaning that the cooperative could choose to “fire” R2R inc and do business with another organization, if they choose to do so.

With this arrangement, we can then truly say that the cooperative can determine its own destiny.

Some people who’ve seen this model have asked us if we were crazy. After all, why expend so much energy and effort into organizing the community into their own cooperative, and then not lock them in to your system?

It doesn’t seem to make any sense to a lot, yes. But for us, it does.

After all, the goal of community empowerment is at the core of what we’re doing, and this is the route, the decision, that increases our chances at achieving that. But furthermore, there’s also business rationality here. Given that the R2R cooperative can choose to work with any organization it wants, this then forces R2R inc to continuously strive to give the coop the the best deal (in fact, the Nanays negotiating with us for the best deal is a welcome and good thing — it spells equality!); it also forces us to make sure that we are indeed the best business partner, keeps us on our toes, and creates a healthy tension and pressure for us to innovate.

And so this is what brings us back to the workshop that Reese and team conducted.

The whole exercise was working with the Nanays in crafting the financials of their cooperative. There was most definitely a managerial view — as they saw first-hand the relationships between wages, product-costing, and overheads – and how all this affected the selling prices of what they produced. And since this is a partnership of openness, R2R coop also saw how their decisions affected the financials of R2R inc.

Summa total, the cooperative took an important step to managing their business from a financial perspective — from simple things such as what ongoing expenses should they rationalize, to more sensitive topics such as how much they want to pay the members and in what schemes. It wasn’t a light conversation, but it was definitely something that had to be done.

And personally, I can’t help but say that it was indeed quite fulfilling to have seen this whole thing unfold.

While the Rags2Riches model is definitely a work-in-progress, it seems more and more that we’re along the right path.

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Woot!! Woot!! The IT Journalists Association of the Philippines (a.k.a. CyberPress) awarded Inovent as IT Startup of the Year for 2009. The other nominees in the category were Sulit.com.ph as well as ANTS.

Unfortunately, Brian Quebengco was in the US so he couldn’t join myself and our partner Henry Nguyen for the awarding.

Aside from the startup of the year, there were other awards given out :

* News Story of the Year went to Smartmatic-TIM undertaking the computerization of the 2010 Elections
* IT Product of the Year was given to Windows 7.
* IT Executive of the Year went to Ricky Banaag, Country Head of Intel Philippines.
* Company of the Year went to Acer
* A special lifetime award was also given to Bill Torres who started the Internet Service Provider Mozcom and is fondly referred to as ‘the Father of the Philippine Internet’.

It was definitely an awesome honor for Inovent, especially given the fact that we truly are a startup — composed of a ragtag team of youthful and vibrant designers, engineers, and believers who didn’t even have an office when we were starting. Because of these humble beginnings,  the Beta prototype of the Ilumina was actually built in the condo unit of our student-engineer! :p

Here’s looking to 2010 and beyond as we see how the succeeding chapters of our startup story evolves …

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The MCPI (Microfinancing Council of the Philippines) had a regional conference on the theme Beyond Credit : A Holistic Approach to Poverty Eradication, and we at Hapinoy were invited to share our experience and perspective on the topic.

The topic is actually quite interesting, especially since we founded MicroVentures/Hapinoy specifically on this insight : Given that Microfinancing’s “technology” had been “perfected” – to the tune of 99+% repayment rates – the next step really is to provide business development services.

Here are some pictures and my comments on the event :

Angel de Leon, Executive Director of TSKI gives the Welcoming Remarks to the Conference.

MCPI President and TSPI Executive Director Ruben de Lara delivers the Opening Remarks. He contextualizes how Microfinancing as a field has certainly grown, but the future demands a new approach beyond just access to financing. This is really the running thread – a new paradigm in which MFI’s must evolve beyond credit into delivering more services to those who need it the most — particularly Healthcare, Education, Shelter, Sanitation, and Microinsurance.

Keynote Speaker Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Reynato Puno delivers the keynote address. He touches on the poverty situation in the Philippines and the solutions percolating around the sphere, of which microfinancing plays a key part. Really cool moment — he actually cites Hapinoy as one of those examples, and was actually able to articulate it in accurate detail (woohoooo!). He then proceeds to share the Justice Department’s efforts in delivering services to the poor, specifically the “Justice on Wheels”.

Roundtable on “Services of MFI’s to Clients that go Beyond Credit” – Angel de Leon, Executive Director of TSKI, Julius Alip of CARD-BDS, Fr. Jovic Lobrigo of Simbag sa Pag-Asenso, and Gilbert Maramba of Negros Women’s Foundation.

Professor Ron Chua of AIM, who has dedicated his academic work into the study of Microfinance and poverty alleviation;

He gave an insightful talk wrought with (some slightly depressing) statistics on the Philippines. The challenge he really poses to the microfinancing industry is this : how can we dramatically increase the incomes of a broader segment of clients, thereby helping them cross the poverty threshold?

Happy Tan, Country Head of Grameen Foundation Philippines asks a question to the panel.

Our roundtable discussion on “Other Complementary Services” –with me in the picture are Rolando Victoria of Alalay sa Kaunlaran, Inc and Ma. Victoria Abello of NWTF.

We shared Hapinoy’s Path to Prosperity for the Community Stores, as well as our strategy on evolution — specifically, developing and rolling out Hapinoy+ as well as opening up the Hapinoy network to micro-producers.

Thanks to Hapinoy’s Communication Head, Pabsy Pabalan, i’ve now taken the discipline of taking my picture with the conference streamer during such events we participate in :p

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Thank you for the pride, Ef It’s such a cool and refreshing feeling to see headlines like the ones below … you rock!

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BASA (Bayan Akayin sa Abot-Tanaw) is a volunteer-driven outreach project conceived by  Father Ted Gonzales, SJ.

The group envisions a Filipino people nourished by reading; thus harnessing a powerful imagination for nation-building. The group’s challenge is to enlighten souls, liberate minds, and empower lives through knowledge sharing – believing that informed minds and hearts of integrity will lead to better life choices. As such, most of its activities – led by Marifel Castriciones – are reading programs and library-building.

Late last year, Fr. Ted brought up the idea of BASA creating and launching its own book. I thought it was a really cool idea, and so we put together a team who could make it happen.

We invited Ms. Tintin Bersola-Babao – TV personality and children’s book author – to be our partner-writer in making this book a reality. Coupled with artist Martin Malabanan and Palanca-award winner Christine Belen as the editor, lo and behold the book “Si Kontra, Si Bida at Si Big Boy Buwaya” sees the light of day.

Digging deeper, it’s actually a very timely-written book that teaches lessons on nationalism, brotherhood, and team building; Particularly relevant now as we’re gearing up for the 2010 Philippine Elections.

Rounding up the cast of characters were Nines Terol-Zialcita, Ida Amigo, Mira Angeles, and supporter Jess Lorenzo. Sponsors that also made it possible are the League of Corporate Foundations (LCF), Accupoint, and Paul Santos.

Check it out now!

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