I Seriously Like Green

Not only the color, but the concept of its relationship to being eco-friendly as well.

Recently, I got to read blogs about having eco-friendly spaces. It’s good to hear that amidst the environmental solutions that many countries are experiencing, many more people are engaging themselves in more eco-friendly ways.

I love places, or houses with wonderful and modern design. I follow many blogs that never stop publishing well-designed houses with interiors that will make you want to stay home forever. While doing so, I saw photos of offices to dream for. As an aspiring entrepreneur, I DREAM, and ask the universe, to conspire for me, because these are the kinds of offices that I want to spend my time in, working on the greatest business ideas that I have and make the world a better place:

It would be great to have my office in my home. It will give me more time for my family. At the same time, I don’t need to expose myself to the concrete jungle. I like the way this combines minimalism and eco-friendliness. In fact, it’s a growing trend now. This could be my office. YES PLEASE!

I like this one too. The light, the plants, and the whole ambiance. I would like to work in a place that makes me more productive. In a space with furnitures that are mostly recycled, this will cut costs but will fancify (new word!) the area. I definitely should start designing one of my own too!

Quick fact: Did you know that today, a new toilet uses no more than 1.6 gallons of water? Not only does the tank size of your toilet contribute to how much water you use, but leaky toilets can consume up to 200 gallons per day! (source: http://www.fi.edu/guide/stevenson/studentres.html) This is not the office itself, obviously. But to have this in my office is a big YES. To save water in my office is a must. And whoever who conceptualized this is simple combination of sink and toilet is a genius!

It makes me feel good when I start dreaming about that places that I want to have and to go to. Dreaming of saving the earth feels even better! I’m excited, I cannot wait!

 

Everybody’s Busy

As a college student, staying in a dorm is one of the usual choices of those who live far from the university. In my case, I stay in a dormitory which takes me about 5-10 minute walking time from the dorm to school or vice versa. This is a long walk, especially when I’m tired from all the work in school. But sometimes, it’s otherwise, especially when the things I see around are the subjects of my thinking.

On weekdays, I wake up at the sound of jeepneys honking their horns to get passengers. It’s always annoying because it never stops. I get down the building and start dealing with hundreds of people walking in all sorts of directions, men or women shouting out their lungs to get jeepney passengers in exchange for coins, pedicab drivers counter flowing in a one-way street, street vendors going through their daily business in karts placed in supposed sidewalks that are too narrow to be used by people, the usual beggars randomly approaching strangers in the hope of getting money for their meal for the day, smokers puffing their last smoke before throwing off the the cigarette butt… I see it everyday. It’s all eyesore. It’s all a mess. Especially in Manila, where everybody’s busy.

A typical scene in Manila (credits to the owner of this photo)

Drivers are busy trying to earn money for their families. Students are busy as they get on with their classes. Employees are busy making ends meet. People are busy. They have to get on with their lives.

Maybe it’s me. Maybe it’s my habit of overseeing the negative instead of the little ones that are somehow better. But it’s all there. I call what I see. Everyone’s just so busy with their lives, including myself. We’re all so busy that we fail to see the literal mess we make around.

I can’t blame anyone, though. We’re all responsible for our lives and our own actions, and what I see around me is part of my responsibility. We’re in a third world country and in our search for purpose, making a mess must have to be a part of it. I believe that in time, in the rush, among those who walk in many directions will stand a person who will stop and stare at the mess around and start urging people to clean it. It can be me. It can be you as well.

The bottom line? If we start minding our external world aside from getting busy with our own, I think our home doesn’t have to be so messy. Following rules and cultivating values among people won’t be so difficult. And more peaceful will everything be.

The Kindness Project

One of the oddest school projects that I’ve had is from my Personnel Management (Human Resource Management class). It isn’t the kind of project that has to be done in relation to the past lessons that we’ve had. This one’s different, and simple: All we had to do was to do any act of kindness to anyone we want. It has to be genuine, of course, not the kind of kindness activity that other people do for show. I would like to believe that there are more people who actually do something for the sake of humanity, and this kindness project is definitely a great opportunity for us to give our share.

We initially planned a feeding program in an institution for kids abandoned by their parents. The plan was to gather as much friends as we can as it is an activity proposed by an organization in La Salle,  and this program will definitely a great way to enjoy the day with kids who are always delighted to see visitors even though they have never met them in their lives.

That was until Yolanda happened.

The super typhoon was unbelievable. At the same time, it was difficult to measure how strong the catastrophe was because at that time, though classes have already been suspended, it was only a gloomy day with some little rains, while it was a total havoc in Visayas. We had to cling to local TV networks, even CNN or BBC, to see the kind of devastation of one of the strongest typhoons that have ever made landfall. It was only after the storm, a few days after the devastation and the storm surge, when communication went back on, that we saw the heart-breaking images of how Samar and Leyte have been totally leveled by the powerful force of nature. The automatic notion was the call for relief, since it has been estimated that around 10,000 people died and a million more are affected.

This was a perfect time to share kindness. Helping in packing of relief goods would be a great help for the victims who have lost their homes. And although it was a project, we did not treat is a mere requirement. This is really a call to reach out for humanity, because as humans, taking care of others is a responsibility.

As part of the requirement, we had to document the relief-packing activity (documented or not, we were still willing to help). It was overwhelming to be a part of DSWD’s satellite relief packing area because donations are coming from all sorts of places. It was open 24/7, so did the arrival of many donations from many businesses and institutions. What was needed was manpower, and we were glad to be part of it. In the video, you can see us wearing face masks. That was an option because some of the volunteers are allergic to dust, and a face mask is one way to prevent that. What we did was we sorted out clothes to categories: female tops, female bottoms, male tops, male bottoms, kids tops, and kids bottoms. That was just for one station. Other stations had packing for canned goods, toiletries, and other basic needs. It was around 1pm, just after lunch, and the tendency at that time was to be sleepy and all. What we did was we tried to make things light for us, by sharing stories and jokes, just to motivate us more. The work was physical. We had to literally count the clothes and make sure we put enough in one sack.

Back home, I have already donated my clothes through a different organization, and I’m sure that will reach those who badly need it. The act itself is very fulfilling but I knew I could do something more. Staying home and complaining through social media and putting the blame to the government officials won’t help. I think this kind of uplifting will definitely have a great impact, especially to those in need.

Prayers of The Sick

As part of our Service Learning project, we were asked to record a 30-minute prayer recording for the sick patients of St. Lukes. Easy, we thought it was, since all we had to do was to compile instrumentals and have a script that we can easily read while on record.

This is a sample of the final recording that we had for the prayers. It took me around 20 minutes to compile everything from my group mates and it did sound great! The day after we went to our Service Learning session, it was all ready, saved in a CD, and that all we had to do was to present it to the admins of the institution.

However, it was rejected.

I understood why. The audience were the sick in the institution. Maybe the songs we chose were too fast and loud for them to appreciate. The readings were read fast as well, and Father said that our way of thinking is not as fast as theirs. It was a good lesson in the end, so that next time that we do something for others, we should consider their needs for them to appreciate it fully.

 

A Challenge for an Entrepreneur

Probably one of the greatest challenges of being an entrepreneur comes in registering a business. Right now, the main requirement in our practicum for this term is to have our business venture registered in respective government agencies. With the mayor’s permit done, DTI (Department of Trade and Industry) processed, all we have in our list now is to register to the Bureau of Internal Revenue, the agency that is responsible in handling people’s taxes.

Government controversies are always on the headlines nowadays, and even though I’m not directly affected by it, I should start getting involved in getting to know the issue, now that I am registering my name in an LGU.

I was assigned to register our business in one of the BIR stations in Manila. The experience wasn’t so exciting. The place was filled with people who obviously don’t know where to go as well. It was barely an orderly place–the space is small, not enough to accommodate people in the room that’s why many had to line up outside. Piles of papers greet you once you enter. The workers aren’t so pleasing, it was like their job was forced for them to do. There’s minimal, if not at all, system. Here in this photo, you see a man looking for his TIN ID in a pile of cards in a shoebox.Even though a sign says clearly that there is no noon time break, the people there, including I, had to wait for about an hour for the operations to resume because aside from the two absent employees who are supposed to accommodate people, the other two were having their break. Clearly these were some of the factors that are unconvincing.

With all that I saw, with all the encounters of people getting furious with the system, with all the controversies of politicians pocketing the money of the public, or even the tax evasion cases that that BIR files against selected personalities, and this, the office that drains so much energy because of long processes… where do people’s money go? What will my taxes contribute, where will it benefit?

So this, as many people said, is a challenge for an entrepreneur. Amidst the controversies and the temptations to get away from a duty (because clearly a lot gets away for not paying taxes), I personally think that the challenge here is to be intact in your values and still be as an honest, ethical, and responsible member of the society. The problems are laid out on the table. How can I provide the solution? Is there any solution to this illness at all? I guess it’s for me, and for the rest of the entrepreneurs, to find out.

Inconvenient Truth

I’ve seen the film first when I was in High School, and I have to admit that the truth about the environmental conditions are very alarming. In fact, it is becoming more alarming now that the climate conditions have changed, especially after the recent devastation of Yolanda, displacing thousands of families in the Visayas area. Indeed, the truth is becoming more inconvenient.

Haiyan (Yolanda) is a wake up call. It caught the attention of not only the whole Philippine community but the international community as well. In this country where the main spotlight is focused on government controversies, there is only little attention paid to the environment, aside from the post-Yolanda’s effects on the islands where it made landfall on and the neighboring islands. While the media are focusing on the political crooks who deny the allegations of them corrupting the money of the people, or the tax collectors choosing who to chase after for alleged tax evasion,  most of the people are aware of the environmental situation of the country, but are helpless because they don’t know where exactly to start.

I personally think that although there are a number of groups or organizations who take an effort to raise environmental awareness, it is yet to reach a lot of people. And for some who are not aware are not necessarily helping. They just know. And it doesn’t get anywhere beyond knowing. As a step in determining how we could help, we tried write a letter to the city mayor or Manila regarding the issues of environment, as part of our requirements in our Corporate Social Responsibility classes. At first, I really don’t know what to write, but taking the Inconvenient Truth in consideration, I didn’t realize that I’ve written so much, which tells that I have so much to say and to recommend to the mayor.

Some of the recommendations that we sent were:

1.  Implement the environmental laws well.

2. Save the empty lots and use it as a place for planting trees.

3. Educate the uneducated. The people living on the streets have something to do with pollution because they don’t know how alarming and pollution is, because they are used to it.

4. Set the right budget to rehabilitate our environment and don’t let your men pocket the money for personal gain.

And so on. There has to be someone who should stand up and start taking bold steps against environmental issues. We are looking up to the government despite all the problems and issues, and at the same time, to ourselves, because I believe the solution to the inconvenient truth is to face it, and help lessen it by raising the awareness to others.

Lessons From Enron

Prior to Andrew Fastow’s talk, we were asked by our COSORES (Corporate Social Responsibility) class to watch a documentary called “The Smartest Guys in the Room. It was about Enron, how it started in 1985 when Ken Lay merged two natural gas pipeline companies to form it. They were the largest seller of natural gas in 1992. After the deregulation of the energy markets, they were the ones who started selling energy at high market prices, resulting to increased revenues.

I am no financial genius and I admit that it was difficult for me at first to understand the jargons in the financial corporate world. Nonetheless, it was interesting to study the case of Enron through the documentary because it gave me a glimpse of how it is in financial markets, though this one is set in the United States. Thankfully, using context clues I was able to grasp the concept of Enron’s rise and fall. At the same time, I did quite a few researches to better understand why Enron reported the largest corporate bankruptcy until US History (until WorldCom).

From what I understood, while Enron’s stock prices skyrocketed to $80-90/share, and at the time they were named “America’s most innovative company”, while investors and many shareholders were excited at the surprising grow of Enron, there was a dirty inside job as they manipulated their numbers to make it look like they were getting high returns and profits.

I personally think that pride and greed can change a person so much. It’s ridiculous to think that a piece of paper we call money can control and give power. I remember from the documentary when one person said that Jeff Skilling, the then CEO of Enron, had a desperate need to believe that Enron was a success, forcing fraud to cover up for the failure they cannot admit. And that most of the people in Enron were nerds, they had the kind of knowledge that can be easily be overlooked by the government and the laws that protect the interest of shareholders and investors for the sake of the good of the whole economy. These nerds are hidden from the image of power that display that’s why many people looked up to them.  In fact, they were even connected to the government, involving the image of politics in the whole issue. It was Andrew Fastow who led the fraud to cover up what was really happening—their stock price was up but in reality they were in debt by billions. He put up false partnerships and fake deals to cover up for the debt and make money for himself.

Soon enough after they were exposed, first through Bethany McLean’s article “Is Enron Overpriced?”, many started to doubt their credibility. Not so long after, Enron declared bankruptcy, with over $60 billion in assets. Andrew Fastow, Jeff skilling, Ken Lay, and many other executives of Enron were charged and were sent to prison. Sadly, over a thousand Enron employees lost their jobs, many were heartbroken by the amount that they invested on which could have gone to their future plans.

Now, more than 10 years after Enron filed for bankruptcy, there are many lessons to learn. Fastow is now a consultant in a company and has been continuing to give talks to many institutions about fraud and many corporate ethical issues. It is good that he has learned from his past and is not sharing the lesson away for people not to do it again (though it did, when many other scandals surfaced in the US that led to the economic crisis, some of which were Meryll Lynch, Lehman Borthers, ETC).

Here in the Philippines, corruption is rampant; not only with the government, but also with corporations who have the power because they have the money. The main example was the businesswoman named Napoles, whom angered many of the Filipinos, including my relatives, for taking away their taxes to the pockets of the chosen few. At one point, I realized that the judiciary system in the US penalized those who should be penalized well, and those who deserved to be sent to jail, no matter how much money they have, were jailed. Here in the Philippines, even most of the officials are guilty for taking away a substantial amount of wealth from the people, which frustrates me that even now they have ways to get out of it.

The case of Enron was a wake up call not only to the investors and shareholders, but also to the government, that when it comes to ethics, it would be a long battle as long as the pride and greed of a person is there placed on the table. Nonetheless, there is a solution to lessen trickery and fraud, and that starts with the person himself, with us, as future business owners, to have the right mindset to build bridges by practicing ethical decision making for the good of the many, and not burn bridges because of greed.

Human Nature: A Model of a Successful Social Enterprise

One of the social enterprises that I look up to is Human Nature. We actually had this topic for our Good News Wednesday in our COSORES class, where we had to share many different companies which practice Corporate Social Responsibility. Human Nature, from Gandang Kalikasang, Inc., is a good example of an enterprise that reaches out to people and to the environment.

Owned by Anna Meloto-Wilk, daughter of the founder of Gawad Kalinga, Tony Meloto, Human Nature basically produces cosmetics made from all natural products. In the Philippines today, there are many social enterprises in operation but none has reached has such a milestone as Gandang Kalikasang, Inc. It is well-known for their three core values: Pro-Philippines, Pro-Poor, Pro-Environment.

Pro-Philippines.
Human Nature’s products are 100% made in the Philippines. The ingredients are all natural, free from harmful chemicals. This just goes to show that our products can be at par with many different cosmetics products from the other countries, as far as quality is concerned.

Pro-Poor.
The products are made from all-natural ingredients grown by their community business partners to generate more income for them, much higher returns than from traditional farming. This way, they are helping the poor communities and teach them to work to be able to have a good and comfortable life. Its products are sold through direct selling to give opportunities to many ordinary people.

Pro-Environment.
The bottles that they use are highly recyclable. In fact, they have a project called “Balik Bote Bigay Buhay” which sells used and recycled bottles to give the proceeds to the poor.

Crowdfunding Platforms. Genius.

I participated in one of the activities in school where we visited a farm (an exceptional one, I had to say), and from there get to know the many ways of the social entrepreneurs and how they support the communities through their ventures. Being a participant, we will have to work as social entrepreneurs and come up with new ideas to spark change for the communities. White on my first meeting with my team, one of my teammates introduced me to Kickstarter.com, a funding platform. I wondered what a funding platform was because I’ve never heard of it before.

Being new to this idea, I started reading around articles and browsed the net about crowdfunding platforms. According to wikipedia, crowdfunding is basically a collective effort of individuals who raise funds for a project initiated by other people or organizations. It’s a way to invite investors to a specific idea to make it happen. Fairly simple, but sounds awesome! Kickstarter.com, the leading firm that backs up many projects, is changing the way million people connect to back and support financially projects of creative people. Many projects were successfully launched because people supported the projects. Those creative people who couldn’t get on with the idea are now backed by people from around the world who believe in them, and Internet is making it possible.

Isang Litrong Liwanag

I’ve seen this video about two years ago, and I thought it was genius!

Now that I’ve seen it again, I wondered if anyone is still spearheading this kind of genius work to those who are poor. Who actually thought of using soda bottles to light up a house? Not me, though I knew that bleach has capabilities of scattering light. It not only saves electricity, but the environment as well, which we need to work on amidst alarming effects of pollution.

It’s overwhelming to see simple people doing the biggest things out of small things. The government? While some strive to push efforts to make the lives of many people better, we can’t really turn our heads from those who strive to hide their lies after stealing money from the people. Anyway, all hope is not lost. There are people out there who are gifted with talents, and use those talents not only for their personal benefit. Kudos to you, Mang Demi Solar!