Bam wants young people to become entrepreneurs

CEBU, Philippines -  Liberty Party senatorial candidate Paolo Benigno “Bam” Aquino IV sees the need to train the young people on micro-entrepreneurship to solve the country’s problem on unemployment.

Aquino,  a multi-awarded social entrepreneur who was recently awarded as one of 2012 Ten Outstanding Young Persons (TOYP) of the World, said the problem starts with graduates who are mismatched with the jobs available in the market.

He cited as an example the 500,000 nursing graduates who are working in call centers.

“A lot of our nursing graduates are working in call centers, obviously because of lack of opportunities among our nursing graduates to work in their own field,” Aquino said.

Aquino said that in his visits to the various parts of the country, he had observed that the young people needs job and there is an on-going problem of having a hard time finding one that can fit into their educational attainment.

Aquino, who is also the president of Hapinoy, a social enterprise that has been awarded around the world for its poverty alleviation program using innovations in micro-enterprise, micro-finance, and the Filipino staple, the sari-sari store, believes that we have to be a nation of entrepreneurs to free the people from poverty.

Since its inception in 2007, Hapinoy has already improved  the lives of thousands of households from different parts of the Philippines.

“I hope to be able to contribute to policy-making that is pro-poor, pro-democracy, and pro-freedom of economic and social opportunities,” said Aquino as he expressed gladness about his good showing in an internal survey by the opposing political party.

“We literally have millions of Filipinos suffering from poverty and socio-economic oppression,” Aquino said.

Aquino added that their experience in Hapinoy has shown that when you give someone  not just a dole-out but access to credit, market, training, and other support services, they will be able to lift themselves and their families out of poverty.

He said that from subsistence income-earners with barely anything to eat, they become micro-entrepreneurs who are able to run a successful micro-business and support their families.

Some of them even graduate to running larger “community stores” that also employ others in their community.

Aquino is former chairman of the National Youth Commission (NYC) and Hapinoy won the United Nations’ Project Inspire Award, while he was recognized as Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum in 2006.

In 2010, he was one of Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneurs  of  the Year and Ten Outstanding Young Men (TOYM) of the Republic of the Philippines for Social Enterprise and Community Development.

Aquino is the first cousin of President Benigno Aquino, III.  —FPL (FREEMAN)