Challenging the youth to help fight poverty through social entrepreneurship

MANILA, Philippines - At 22 years old, Reese Fernandez co-founded Rags2Riches (R2R) in 2007 to empower the women of Payatas by helping them create high-value designer products from rags. In one of her many interviews, Fernandez said that social entrepreneurship is simply merging social cause and business, and making it sustainable. And that’s exactly what they did in R2R. They were able to build a profitable business enterprise while uplifting the lives of these women who were previously at the mercy of middlemen in selling their handwoven rugs.

Fernandez is just one of the growing number of Project Pagsulong Ambassadors who are helping to create awareness for the P1-million challenge that seeks to encourage the Filipino youth to become social entrepreneurs.

Organized by PLDT KaAsenso, PLDT-Smart Foundation, The Outstanding Students of the Philippines Alumni Community (TOSP-AC), and RFM Foundation, Project Pagsulong hopes to tap into the entrepreneurial spirit among our youth to address the country’s social problems.

“We are rallying aspiring and budding young Filipino entrepreneurs to bring forward brilliant business ideas that could help alleviate poverty,” said PLDT-Smart Foundation president Esther Santos. “By offering (a total of ) P1 million seed money to develop the business ideas of winning teams, Project Pagsulong  seeks to engage the youth in nation-building because they are perhaps the most energetic, idealistic and vibrant sector of society.”

“Project Pagsulong is part of our brand’s (PLDT KaAsenso) objective of promoting entrepreneurship towards nation-building,” said Patrick Tang, PLDT Head of HomeMarketing for Voice and Microbusiness. “We want to advocate for youth-preneurship and take it a notch further by providing an opportunity for them to make their entrepreneurial ideas a reality, and at the same time, become social movers.”

Aside from R2R’s Reese Fernandez, also promoting awareness of the challenge are dynamic social movers who represent today’s youth in the fields of entrepreneurship, sports, governance, technology, and the arts, including Bam Aquino, co-founder of the social enterprise Hapinoy and Ten Outstanding Young Men (TOYM) awardee in Social Enterprise and Community Development category.

“Six years ago, when we started Hapinoy, no one knew what social enterprise was. We have come a long way in this movement. And now, we have Project Pagsulong, a very significant endeavor where we can share our entrepreneurial experience to young people and help motivate them to dream bigger,” Aquino said.

The challenge is open to teams of three to five young adults, 18 to 30 years old, from all socio-economic status, regardless of educational attainment. It requires participating teams to submit a business idea that can potentially solve a societal issue or need.

After the initial screening, the short-listed teams will go to the next round where they will be asked to submit an expanded version of the proposal for another round of evaluation. Ten teams will be selected for the final round where mentors and coaches will guide the finalists in concretizing and executing their business plans.