For A Cause

The Past Years Have Seen Social Entrepreneurship Flourish, Especially as a Younger Generation Uses Innovation and Technology to Solve Chronic Social Problems and Create Social Value
 

- Tricia Morente

Social enterprises spring from different motivations—saving the environment, uplifting the marginalized, and ensuring food security—but what unites its founders is a keenness for turning idealism into action. In today’s digital world, where information is readily available and “real time” has become the norm, the once common practice of waiting for solutions from government simply won’t cut it anymore. People are generally more proactive about the changes they want to see in society.

A CUP FOR CULTURE

Often, people get involved in social change when they connect with others who inspire them. For Benjamin Abadiano, the former Jesuit who owns the cheekily named Advocafé, a four-branch coffee establishment that channels “100 percent of its net income” towards the indigenous people (IP) community, it was an ethnographic study project of the Manobo tribes of Bukidnon that steered him towards social entrepreneurship.

“It really opened my mind to the realities experienced by the IPs,” relates Abadiano. “It struck me how a community that’s so rich in terms of culture and values—I believe they provide us our identity as a people—can be so deprived.”

Long before social enterprises were in vogue, Abadiano had already been working with IPs since the 1980s, staying in Mindoro with the Mangyan tribe for nine years. His team created a skills centric high school program with a two-fold purpose: responding to the educational needs of the students and providing a sustainable mechanism for the school to eventually run itself. “We called it ‘livelihood programs’ back then, but it’s the same model followed by social enterprises today,” says Abadiano, adding that it pleases him to see more people from the younger generation, especially the IP youth, getting into the space.