The entrepreneur-nuns of Good Shepherd: Sister Act

Mountain Maid social enterprise. Chances are, this doesn’t sound familiar. Good Shepherd strawberry jam from Baguio City. Now, you know this!

It’s the homemade product sold by Good Shepherd nuns since 1953. It has been in everyone’s pasalubong list whenever one visits the City of Pines. I grew up with this. I love this jam so much that we even tried hard to carry it at ECHOstore but it always goes out of stock so quickly, so replenishment for our shelves was so hard to get.

So when I finally met Sister Guada, the moving force behind the operations of the Good Shepherd line of food products at a social enterprise conference a couple of years back, we animatedly got into conversation. I suggested to her some tips to further enhance the packaging. Add the story of the Ifugao culture, I told her, because the uniqueness of the local culture is what makes this product special. It was to my pleasant surprise that a couple of months after, I received a package, in it was a bottle of Good Shepherd jam with the packaging designed nicer. The bottle label has an added image of an Igorot, the story of the jam and the map of the Cordilleran region.

I saw Sister Guada last week when we went up to Baguio. She was more bubbly than ever, smiling even as she recounted to me her cancer-surviving tips of drinking vegetable enzymes daily. She was excited to show us everything she was doing while making us meet two international guests from the Conrad Hilton Foundation for Nuns, who were amazed at the best practices they were seeing.

The Mountain Maid training center was packed with 300 indigenous Igorot students under its work-study program. Values education is alternated with three work days a week at the food production area. From this school, there are now doctors, nurses, social workers and missionaries. These results, plus the food production, were being noted by the visiting guests who give funding for work done by congregations of nuns all over the world.

What I find remarkable about Sister Guada is how she has stepped up and continues to do so. She bravely fought cancer, refusing chemotherapy and healed herself even as she continues to be part of a cancer support group. She bustles about listening to what her customers want as she continues developing her product line, giving livelihood to farmer suppliers and workers, impacting her supply chain even as she looks to cultivating and preserving the rare and native black sesame seeds and peanuts, which they use. 

Feedback and sharing from customers push Sister Guada and her team into trying out new recipes in constant R&D in their kitchen (we caught her trying out a new cassava cake recipe). She proudly showed us her new staff house with solar panels and recycled wood made into stylish furniture. She has even started climate change mitigation planning for their ube crops so they can continue having supply for the ube jam they have been producing since 1976. During harvest season of their many coffee plants in the area, they diligently gather civet cat’s poo, which they package as specialty coffee.

The success of their thriving social enterprise is about quality and social impact, with mostly young women diligently working in the food production. These are new metrics of success that I have come to embrace. They can never meet their market demand, yet have refused expansion directions as they strive to balance the education of the Igorot youth with skill and values.

Sister Guada is an amazing enterprising and progressive nun who comes across as an entrepreneur, yet carrying the sacredness of her divine mission in her everyday work. “You so inspire me!” she told me and my two ECHOstore friends Chit J. and Reena F. “But Sister, you inspire us, too, with your positive and dynamic energy!” we exclaimed. The three of us left the place with an overwhelming sense of positive and loving energy, having experienced a bit of entrepreneurial heaven on earth at the Good Shepherd’s space.

It is through small extraordinary meetings with dynamic women like her, nun though she is, that inspire  me to continue inspiring others. It is faith lived in action, spirituality made practical for transformative change to happen to other people’s lives, and enterprises that support social and environmental care. Sister Guada is all about “stepping up,” trying new things, innovating, taking charge and leading, refusing to be stereotyped... now that’s my kind of woman!

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The Business and Professional Women’s Network (BPW) Makati-PH’s forum titled “Women Stepping Up” will be held on Nov. 12, Tuesday, 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., at the Carlos P. Romulo Auditorium of RCBC Plaza in Makati City.

Conversations on leadership and women’s economic empowerment will be led by keynote speakers Sen. Grace Poe and Synergos Foundation founder Peggy Rockefeller-Dulany. International speakers via Skype include Twitter’s Aliza Knox, International Finance Center’s Usha Rao Monari and Quantum Leaps CEO and Global Platform for the Sourcing for Women Vendors co-founder Virginia Littlejohn to name a few. Rappler CEO Maria Ressa, Women Business Council president Chit Juan, Shangri-La Hotels (Global) sustainability and corporate social responsibility director Patricia Gallardo-Dwyer and Banago International’s Renee Patron will all add their voices in the conversations.

“Women Stepping Up” is powered by the BPW Makati-PH, the local association aligned to BPW International and a signatory to the United Nations Global Compact on the women economic empowerment principles. The event is co-sponsored by RCBC.

(You may register online at www.womensteppingup.org.)