We need not ‘Occupy Ayala’

While listening to our Philippine representatives to the Apec Business Advisory Council (Abac) – Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala, Tony Tan Caktiong and Doris Ho – brief President Aquino on the upcoming Apec meeting in Honolulu this November, I could not help but reflect on why we need not “Occupy Ayala.”

Here were leaders of major Filipino corporations talking passionately about helping promote and protect our talented and skilled pool of workers and professionals, focusing on the importance of food security issues, supporting Public-Private Partnerships for much needed infrastructure, and pushing forward the Apec Anti-Corruption Code of Conduct for Business.  Here were captains of industry who have committed their time, talent and treasure, so to speak, to advance a Filipino agenda in a key global economic forum and its process. Here were just a few of many Filipino business leaders standing against corporate greed and social inequality and for democracy!

My journey into the responsible Filipino corporate community began when I joined the Phinma group of companies in 2006. I was then recruited to take on a dual role as associate director of the newly organized Philippine Business for Education (PBEd) and program director for a just set-up Phinma National Scholarship (PNS) Program.

PBEd was initiated by Ramon del Rosario Jr., Washington Sycip and Jaime Zobel, among other business leaders, to become the voice of business in much-needed Philippine education reform. PNS was launched as part of Phinma’s 50th year celebrations to mold leaders in the fields of education, accountancy and engineering, with strong backing from its head honchos, Oscar Hilado, Mag Albarracin, Ramon del Rosario Jr. and Bobby Laviña.

PBEd quickly gained recognition as a key partner of education reform advocates, just as PBSP (Philippine Business for Social Progress) and PBE (Philippine Business for the Environment) had become so for poverty alleviation and pro-environment communities, respectively.

With Chito Salazar as executive director, PBEd reached out to the academic community and other education reform groups to advocate for more investment in education, teacher quality, expanding basic education to 12 years, mother tongue instruction in the early years and a focused business community intervention in education. It launched and continues to implement the 1000 Teachers Program that aims to get more of the best and the brightest to go into the teaching profession.

PBEd also became a partner to the League of Corporate Foundations-led 57-75 Movement to reverse the education crisis. That movement recently launched “Ten Moves” in response to government’s call to all sectors to help build close to 70,000 classrooms in the next two years to address the classroom shortage in the public education system.

While part of the solution shall be partnerships with private education, a huge part will still require building of classrooms, especially in the underserved areas. “Ten Moves” aims to build 10,000 classrooms in the next two years (please go to www.tenmoves.org now if you want to help!).  Worthy to note here as well are Metrobank’s Ten Outstanding Teachers, Bato Balani’s Many Faces of the Teacher, as well as the private sector-led annual Teachers Month Campaign, which are all giving our teachers the recognition they deserve.

PNS, now taken over by Danielle del Pilar, boasts of having doubled its original targets, reaching 92 beneficiaries. Beyond just awarding tuition fees and allowances, PNS is a leadership program that gives its scholars leadership-enhancing activities, including an annual leadership conference, summer service programs, museum and theater experiences, workshops with leaders, interaction with Phinma senior executives, and other special programs.

Unique to the program is a big brother and sister component where Phinma employees are matched one-on-one with PNS scholars to provide “beyond the funds” assistance, including “kamustahans” that serve as a support system to the scholars as they face university life challenges and handle the demands of the PNS program. The truly inspiring stories of PNS’ 21 graduates are a matter worth sharing in a future column. We are confident that even more inspiring stories will yet be written about these graduates.

Though the PNS program is already good news in corporate social responsibility, Phinma is not stopping there. Inspired by what has been learned at the Asian Forum on Corporate Social Responsibility (AFCSR) organized annually by the AIM Ramon V. del Rosario Sr. Center for Corporate Social Responsibility, it now aims to implement strategic and embedded corporate social responsibility (CSR) group wide. And, this is not just a trend in the Phinma group. Some companies may even be ahead of Phinma but certainly many have now set their sights on aligning CSR strategy with their overall business strategy and embedding CSR into their organizations.

This trend was recently given a boost by the soft launch of a manual for practitioners titled “Towards Strategic CSR” developed by the AIM Center together with the Makati Business Club (MBC). As part of its upcoming year-long commemoration of 30 years as a business forum for constructive ideas (MBC was organized in 1981), MBC aims to encourage its members to use the manual and work with the AIM Center to achieve more impact from and sustain their CSR initiatives. Genuine, strategic and embedded CSR is the next wave forward for the Filipino corporate community in their continuing journey towards becoming good and responsible corporate citizens. This will go a long way in ensuring that we need not “Occupy Ayala.”

Peter Angelo V. Perfecto is the executive director of the Makati Business Club.