Bayan Academy targets grassroots entrepreneurs

To Gina Lopez, organizing Bayan Academy is just the logical next step to the microfinance project she had been undertaking the past 10 years. And she embarked on microfinance because she found out in the course of doing Bantay Bata that many abused children come from families with serious financial difficulties.

And she did Bantay Bata because she found out while doing disaster relief work that victims of calamities need more than temporary relief… they need relief from poverty. She found out that many children have been brutalized at home because their elders were driven into hurting their own children out of sheer frustration with their state of poverty.

She thought education is their best ticket out of poverty, so she sought to improve teaching in public schools through e-media. But she also found out in the course of trying to improve school instruction that hungry and malnourished children can’t absorb learning as well. So, she now has a feeding program that goes hand in hand with her school projects.

There is no small project for Gina because every small initiative eventually branches out in many directions. Nothing less than an encompassing response to a problem satisfies her. To Gina, the key problem is poverty and every initiative she undertakes attacks a side of poverty that impacts on the whole. The difference between Gina and the typical politician or civic leader is that she has the tenacity to follow through.

Yesterday, she inaugurated Bayan Academy because after 10 years dispensing over P5 billion in microfinance loans to over 60,000 beneficiaries, she now sees the need to move up to the next level. Microfinance, to Gina, merely serves as a means to help fight poverty, and not its end. With its 98 per cent repayment rate, it is easy to make a big business out of microfinance even with modest interest rates. But that’s not how she looks at it. “The challenge for Bayan Mircofinance, as for other MFIs, is how to become more and more social and more and more entrepreneurial.”

Thus, Bayan Academy was formally inaugurated to complement earlier efforts in microfinance. The Academy, to be housed at Cinderella building on EDSA in Quezon City, will actively pursue its core strategies of wealth creation, job generation and family formation — all designed to uplift the socio-economic conditions of Bayan communities in 303 municipalities and 32 branches.

For Gina, establishing Bayan Academy is like establishing Asian Institute of Management all over again, but this time focused on the grassroots. Her grandfather, Don Eugenio gave a sizeable donation to put up AIM and Gina herself has an AIM Masters degree in development management. Ed Morato, the director of Bayan Academy is an AIM professor and a majority of the lecturers and trainors of Bayan Academy are AIM professors and graduates practically donating their time to a worthy cause. She has completed the virtuous circle her grandfather started by making an AIM education benefit the grassroots, at last.

Even before the inauguration of the Bayan Academy training center, a lot of spadework had been done. Bayan developed a wide array of skills, entrepreneurship and management education training programs for Bayan clients or communities, micro-entrepreneurs, microfinance and social development institutions, cooperatives and countryside banks, schools and institutions that provide both formal and non-formal education.

Bayan Academy seeks to democratize the teaching of management and entrepreneurship to microfinance organizations, to small and medium scale enterprises and to other institutions and other associations or even communities that need this kind of training. The Academy aims to give quality education by developing curriculum at different levels; high school, college, masters and professional levels and curriculum for the grassroots which is at the community level. It is also developing learning materials for use at all these levels and to develop teachers who will teach these courses all over the country.

Bayan Academy came about after Gina and Ed realized that Bayan’s microfinance operations were lending and collecting money quite successfully but the businesses or livelihood of its borrowers were not really improving. They developed what they called a grassroots entrepreneurship program to upgrade the livelihood activities of borrowers into micro enterprises and the micro enterprises into small and even medium scale businesses. In the process, they developed a 20-day 120 modules worth of materials.

They then realized there were schools and foundations who were interested in formal curricula. So they began developing curricula for the Masteral level, which they shared with schools nationwide. They also developed courses for the college and high school levels. Because of the wealth of the materials, they found it necessary to have a central location from where they can teach some of these courses.

Bayan Academy is now offering a lot of Certificate courses for professionals in the microfinance industry as well as courses for small entrepreneurs to improve their businesses. They also have human resource courses which include self-mastery, management of the arts, spirituality in the workplace and other courses that will improve the workforce of various development organizations.

The three basic units of Bayan Academy include: Bayan Educational System and Technologies (BEST) which conducts courses designed to improve competencies of microfinance trainors and managers and faculty members of academic institutions; Grassroots Entrepreneurship and Technologies (GREAT) which offers technical, livelihood and entrepreneurship courses to the clients of microfinance institutions and People Management Team (PMT) which undertakes staff development training.

Among its programs are: High School Entrepreneurship Program; BS Entrepreneurship Program; MBA Major in Entrepreneurship and Management (MBA-MEM) Program. The City University of Makati is now offering the MBA program designed by Bayan Academy.

Other courses include: Professional/Management Certificate Courses or stand-alone courses on enterprise management designed to improve the managerial skills of middle and top level management of social, development, microfinance institutions and micro and small enterprises; Training of Trainors on Grassroots Entrepreneurship Management (GEM) Program which uses interactive modules designed for microfinance institutions, rural banks and cooperatives with grassroots client systems, primarily women with livelihood and micro enterprise undertakings.

Bayan Academy will also offer TESDA Accredited Certificate Courses such as Commercial Cooking Certificate Course designed to enhance the knowledge, skills and attitudes of kitchen staff on food preparation and develop their competencies such as clean kitchen areas; cook hot and cold meals; and prepare portion and plate meat or food to guests in hotels, restaurants, clubs, canteen, resorts and luxury cruises.

Bayan will also offer a two-day customized culinary arts course for the grassroots focusing on the fundamentals of setting-up small scale food businesses. The Entrepreneurship component of the course will enable the participants to manage their business effectively while the hands-on component will enhance their cooking skills to deliver better quality food products and services. The recipes chosen for each course is based on current trends of Food SMEs in the community. These short courses are offered at the fully equipped culinary training facility of Bayan.

Those interested can get in touch with Bayan Academy at the 2nd floor, Cinderella building, 825 EDSA, Quezon City or email Diane Año at [email protected].

Pay raise

Marilyn Mana-ay Robles forwarded this one.

A maid asked for a pay increase. The wife was very upset about this and asked:  “Now Maria, why do you want a pay increase?”

Maria: “Well Senora, there are three reasons why I want an increase. The first is that I iron better than you.”

Wife: “Who said you iron better than me?”

Maria: “Your husband said so.”

Wife: “Oh.”

Maria: “The second reason is that I am a better cook than you.”

Wife: “Nonsense, who said you were a better cook than me?”

Maria: “Your husband did.”

Wife: “Oh.”

Maria: “My third reason is that I am a better lover than you.”

Wife (really furious now): “Did my husband say that as well?”

Maria: “No Senora, the gardener did.”

She got the raise.

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]