<p>Recently on a visit to Philippines, I had an opportunity to visit a unique experiment in social entrepreneurship. The reference is to Gawad Kalinga’s Enchanted Farm in Manila serving as a platform to raise social entrepreneurs. This farm helps local farmers and creates wealth in the countryside.<br /><br />Gawad Kalinga (GK) means to “give care” in Filipino. The promoters of the farm envision it to be three things – a farm village university, a silicon valley for social entrepreneurship and a Disneyland for social tourism.<br /><br />Social entrepreneurs are individuals with innovative solutions to society’s most pressing social problems. Social entrepreneurship is the attempt to draw upon business techniques to find solutions to social problems. While conventional entrepreneurs measure performance in profit and return, social entrepreneurs also take into account a positive return to society. They typically attempt to further broad social, cultural, and environmental goals. <br /><br />Gawad Kalinga, situated in Bulacan at a distance of 47 km from Manila international airport, is now a global movement that builds integrated, holistic and sustainable communities in slum areas. According to the promoters of GK, the next few years will see the unfolding of a Philippino dream: 5 million Philippino families will be out of poverty by 2014, with 5,00,000 social entrepreneurs leading a movement towards sustainability, grounded on kindness with excellence and compassion with competence.<br /><br />Gawad Kalinga was started by transforming squalid slums in the cities into beautiful and peaceful intentional communities, and turning wastelands in the rural areas into productivity hubs for food sufficiency to mitigate urban migration and congestion. Since its inception in 1995, much has been accomplished with an army of ordinary people, many of them former victims of calamity, conflict and poverty themselves. <br /><br />Till now, 2,500 communities are built and over a million of the least fortunate housed and helped. As a model for rural economic development, the Enchanted Farm is the first of 25 that will be developed across the country, connecting the poor to the capital, technology, expertise and markets they need.<br /><br />Gawad Kalinga was a social experiment to understand and find solutions to poverty. Of over 2,000, mostly male, gang members, drug dependents and juvenile delinquents that they helped rehabilitate in the biggest slum in Philippines, Bagong Silang during the beginnings of GK, many went back to school and took on regular jobs and now live productive and dignified lives.<br /><br />Grassroots approach<br /><br />What is particularly unique in their grassroots approach is that they take deliberate effort to attract the men. Most philanthropy and BOP (Bottom of the Pyramid) development initiatives – microfinance, microenterprise, programmes for health and education – cater to women, because they are the usual victims or the less empowered. Their strategy in the Philippine context is to include the men – who are often the cause of crime, conflict, domestic violence – to be part of the solutions to the problems that they cause.<br /><br />They build homes, schools, water systems and farms which attract the men to participate and undergo their skills training and intensive values formation in community building. Many of them develop not only competencies but most importantly, confidence, self-respect and the motivation to find work. <br /><br />Former idle men and drunkards become productive and responsible members of their neighbourhood. The transformation in communities with a holistic and inclusive gender strategy is more dramatic and lasting.<br /><br />Gawad Kalinga caught the attention of the world when it turned troubled urban slums in many parts of the Philippines and Jakarta in Indonesia into communities with beautiful homes and landscaped gardens made by the residents themselves. This unique model raised the self esteem of the slum dwellers. <br /><br />As Tony Meloto, the founder chairman of Gawad Kalinga says, “GK has become the embodiment of the Philippino dream...” The thousands of volunteers and hundreds of multinational companies and local governments that partnered with GK over the years are indicators of the success of this unique experiment in social entrepreneurship. <br /><br />Their goal is to inspire the 5,00,000 Philippino social entrepreneurs to create enterprises with a heart; businesses that are both profitable and impactful on poverty reduction by generating jobs for the poor.<br /><br />(The writer is a Bengaluru-based professor of economics)</p>
<p>Recently on a visit to Philippines, I had an opportunity to visit a unique experiment in social entrepreneurship. The reference is to Gawad Kalinga’s Enchanted Farm in Manila serving as a platform to raise social entrepreneurs. This farm helps local farmers and creates wealth in the countryside.<br /><br />Gawad Kalinga (GK) means to “give care” in Filipino. The promoters of the farm envision it to be three things – a farm village university, a silicon valley for social entrepreneurship and a Disneyland for social tourism.<br /><br />Social entrepreneurs are individuals with innovative solutions to society’s most pressing social problems. Social entrepreneurship is the attempt to draw upon business techniques to find solutions to social problems. While conventional entrepreneurs measure performance in profit and return, social entrepreneurs also take into account a positive return to society. They typically attempt to further broad social, cultural, and environmental goals. <br /><br />Gawad Kalinga, situated in Bulacan at a distance of 47 km from Manila international airport, is now a global movement that builds integrated, holistic and sustainable communities in slum areas. According to the promoters of GK, the next few years will see the unfolding of a Philippino dream: 5 million Philippino families will be out of poverty by 2014, with 5,00,000 social entrepreneurs leading a movement towards sustainability, grounded on kindness with excellence and compassion with competence.<br /><br />Gawad Kalinga was started by transforming squalid slums in the cities into beautiful and peaceful intentional communities, and turning wastelands in the rural areas into productivity hubs for food sufficiency to mitigate urban migration and congestion. Since its inception in 1995, much has been accomplished with an army of ordinary people, many of them former victims of calamity, conflict and poverty themselves. <br /><br />Till now, 2,500 communities are built and over a million of the least fortunate housed and helped. As a model for rural economic development, the Enchanted Farm is the first of 25 that will be developed across the country, connecting the poor to the capital, technology, expertise and markets they need.<br /><br />Gawad Kalinga was a social experiment to understand and find solutions to poverty. Of over 2,000, mostly male, gang members, drug dependents and juvenile delinquents that they helped rehabilitate in the biggest slum in Philippines, Bagong Silang during the beginnings of GK, many went back to school and took on regular jobs and now live productive and dignified lives.<br /><br />Grassroots approach<br /><br />What is particularly unique in their grassroots approach is that they take deliberate effort to attract the men. Most philanthropy and BOP (Bottom of the Pyramid) development initiatives – microfinance, microenterprise, programmes for health and education – cater to women, because they are the usual victims or the less empowered. Their strategy in the Philippine context is to include the men – who are often the cause of crime, conflict, domestic violence – to be part of the solutions to the problems that they cause.<br /><br />They build homes, schools, water systems and farms which attract the men to participate and undergo their skills training and intensive values formation in community building. Many of them develop not only competencies but most importantly, confidence, self-respect and the motivation to find work. <br /><br />Former idle men and drunkards become productive and responsible members of their neighbourhood. The transformation in communities with a holistic and inclusive gender strategy is more dramatic and lasting.<br /><br />Gawad Kalinga caught the attention of the world when it turned troubled urban slums in many parts of the Philippines and Jakarta in Indonesia into communities with beautiful homes and landscaped gardens made by the residents themselves. This unique model raised the self esteem of the slum dwellers. <br /><br />As Tony Meloto, the founder chairman of Gawad Kalinga says, “GK has become the embodiment of the Philippino dream...” The thousands of volunteers and hundreds of multinational companies and local governments that partnered with GK over the years are indicators of the success of this unique experiment in social entrepreneurship. <br /><br />Their goal is to inspire the 5,00,000 Philippino social entrepreneurs to create enterprises with a heart; businesses that are both profitable and impactful on poverty reduction by generating jobs for the poor.<br /><br />(The writer is a Bengaluru-based professor of economics)</p>
