As a changemaker, I focus mine and my team's talents to empowering agricultural grassroots communities in creating wealth & prosperity for themselves. I engage in this by enabling our community members in the production and marketing of native and healthy farm-to-market beverages, which the community members themselves co-design. I believe that the wealth & prosperity generated would be one of the solutions that can bring these communities out of poverty and finally get them to participate in the economic activity of the Philippines, a right that they don't recognize yet but a right they need to be given.
Our first and current community, the Gawad Kalinga Enchanted Farm in the Bulacan province of the Philippines, is where I feel a deep connection. It is a place that is indeed magical, whereby community members who were former squatters, drug addicts and terror extremists, are now like one family and have aspirations that are very close to that of the middle class. People here are all excited to turn their community as a template where everyone works together. Here, there is a cluster of social enterprises that helps the community, there are community members who are trained and help scale up the social enterprises, and there are support groups like universities, government agencies and big corporations that support community development. I just love the energy here and the promise of a country that can win over poverty within our lifetime.
I want to see a change in beliefs with the community members that we are serving. Specifically, I want to see our country's farmers who just "work the fields" so that they and their families can get by, would gain the belief that their vocation, what we dub as a "green-collared career", is dignified and one that they can be proud of. Our country is an agricultural country, and agriculture is one of the key sectors that would get the majority of our population to overcome their poverty. However, it is such an irony that the workers in this sector are also among the poorest. But it starts with a change with the workers. So they first have to believe in themselves and their careers. Only then can they set on a road to create prosperity for themselves and help build a vibrant agriculture sector.
I am currently the Production Manager of Happy Green. As such, I am responsible for setting-up the manufacturing systems of the social enterprise while ensuring that production of our farm-to-market beverages is efficient, cost-effective and done with quality. For this, coordination includes working with the Enchanted Farm community for the agricultural inputs, working with our Happy Green Supply Chain Manager for the sourcing & logistics of materials and working with our Sales & Distribution Manager for fulfilling product orders. Simultaneously, I am also the Finance Director of our social enterprise, tasked with monitoring the day-to-day management of our finances. Finally, I am also the General Manager of Happy Green, responsible for the overall direction of the social enterprise and accountable to Gawad Kalinga for the community-integrated operations and the impact generated by our company.
I graduated from Ateneo de Manila University with a Bachelor’s degree in business management. Since university, I also gained certificates for International Business Management as an exchange scholar at the University of San Francisco, for Chinese Culture and Language as a scholar at the Beijing Language Culture and University, and for a short culinary training at the Magsaysay Institute of Hospitality and Culinary Arts in Manila.
While at university, I also volunteered for two years in teaching urban poor public school students on a weekly basis. I also played an active role in the Asia-Pacific Student Entrepreneurship Society, encouraging entrepreneurship with his peers while gaining exposure to the business cultures of Manila, Silicon Valley, Hong Kong, Singapore and Beijing. It is also when I started my social enterprise for providing food for addressing child malnutrition that I got connected with Gawad Kalinga.
