Temporary shelters filled Tent City, driven into the dry earth.
Hundreds of the four million homeless survivors from the largest typhoon ever recorded were forced to live in temporary shelters after Haiyan rocked the Philippines in November last year.
An army of volunteers scurry around the camp in the Philippines province of Iloilo to erect canvas homes for the families whose houses were crushed in the devastation.
Deep in the heart of the tent-made city, social enterprises are trying to stem the poverty and despair. The rescue effort – watched by millions around the world – is the focus of many social entrepreneurs.
“The families, despite limited resources, all welcome me to their homes and share their food and traditions,” says Justin Garrido, an MBA who founded for-profit social enterprise Social Project.PH in July 2012. “It is critically important for a social entrepreneur to visit the community beneficiaries, as well as see the challenges first-hand from a local perspective.”
The typhoon cast a long shadow over the Philippines four months ago, with the United Nations warning than more than 1,500 people remain missing and nearly five million are now living under the poverty threshold.
There are also wider questions about the livelihoods of the wider estimated 14 million people affected by Typhoon Haiyan and the rebuilding effort, which is expected to cost up to $6 billion.
“You can’t simply prescribe first-world solutions to social challenges,” says Justin, who spent time with survivors in Estancia.
His enterprise is developing “Butterfly homes” – an innovative housing solution. The low-cost, steel-structure shelters have the scalability to provide homes to the millions displaced across the Philippines.
The Melbourne Business School graduate launched a fund-raising campaign to build the first 50 Butterfly homes, the initial 20 of which will go to those in Estancia. But his goal is much more ambitious. They want to provide 100,000 to survivors over the next two years.
“As a Filipino American, I had never lived in the Philippines. And seeing the vast social challenges, like poverty, really struck me hard. There is a greater discrepancy between rich and poor,” says Justin, who finished his full-time MBA two years ago.
“But I saw tremendous opportunities and I was inspired by the Filipino social enterprises, which were doing amazing things and empowering the poor as partners.”
Justin’s story is littered with twists and turns. He rose to prominence at ALDI Stores, the German supermarket chain, as a district manager in Washington. After five years he was promoted to director of purchasing and spent a year in Chicago, directly responsible for over $50 million in annual sales.
By that point the company’s turnover grew 4.6 per cent to £2 billion in 2010 and operating profit soared to £18 million. Justin left just as the German giant truly took off – but he has no regrets. “I had a successful and promising career with Aldi. Running stores across the East Coast was always exciting to me,” he recalls
“But after seven years I had lost my passion for my work and I was ready to explore something more.”
A catalyst was a volunteering effort at a soup kitchen in Rogers Park, Chicago. A sense of greater purpose came to the fore and since then Justin has been trying to combine business and entrepreneurship principles with social good.
MBS has been engrossed in social entrepreneurship for years. In 2008, the school launched the Asia Pacific Social Impact Leadership Centre, a hub for education, research and action for social impact and innovation.
Justin backs the school’s influence on his career. He utilized the Net Impact Club and various consulting projects and internships. “My diverse friends and classmates from different countries and disciplines reviewed and critiqued my business plan, and gave excellent advice for my startup,” he says.
“And having a smaller intake and class size also helped facilitate the more meaningful connections with not only classmates, but professors and staff.”
Justin knows that the rebuilding of the Philippines hinges on the help of volunteers. Social Project.PH is based in Manila, in the northern reaches of the country, where Justin has an apartment. But most of his work is done remotely and he is spending the next few months in the U.S before returning to the Philippines.
The enterprise brings in revenue by charging a small website fee if a project reaches its funding goals. But the yield is small and Justin supplements his income by taking on consulting projects – with a social good – and receives income from other investments.
That fits in with his original goal: to create a marketing and business development consultancy that would provide market access to social enterprises. According to his research, there are an estimated 30,000 Filipino social enterprises.
However, there are more ideas in the works. Justin is working on exporting organic food products to the U.S and helping local Filipino enterprises with the marketing, packaging and branding of their products – some of which is already done offline, but a supply chain is being developed.
Stage two of SocialProject.PH is providing more market access to these enterprises. Food products will be exported under the label Social Products, which is a brand extension of SocialProject.PH.
Justin says it will “empower rural farmers, women, and indigenous peoples with a more sustainable way to eradicate poverty”. His team appears determined to bring social solutions to the country’s many challenges.
Uncertainty lingers over many aspects of the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan, in particular the agriculture industry. Justin has a vision to empower rural farmers, but by December 2013, about a month after the typhoon struck, 29 per cent of farming households reported that their livelihoods were completely destroyed.
The destruction of seed stocks, the damage caused to cropland and the accumulation of debris on agricultural lands will also have an impact on subsequent harvests.
But Justin believes he can help to provide growth for the future. “By developing social brands and providing a channel for social enterprises to a global marketplace, we give a model for inclusive growth for others to follow in the future,” he says.
“I envision the Philippines being a source of social brands and a model for social enterprise globally.”
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