2 UP students bag award for cogon grass business

MANILA, Philippines - Two senior business administration students of the University of the Philippines in Diliman won the Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP) business proposal competition last week for their idea of manufacturing furniture from cogon grass.

The Woven Hope business proposition, submitted by Kevin Paolo Hernandez, 19, and Ponce Ernest Samaniego, 22, was one of three business ideas that topped the PBSP’s Business in Development (BiD) challenge.

Hernandez said Woven Hope is an idea for a social enterprise that he, Samaniego and former classmates in the UP College of Business Administration came up with to pursue after college.

“We despised the idea that after four years worth of college hard work, we will just end up as corporate slaves in some multinational company. We felt that our curriculum was geared more toward the corporate track, that we were being trained to be mere employees. So we asked ourselves: why don’t we start up a company of our own?” Hernandez said.

The students started the company Outliers Inc. as a vehicle company for Woven Hope last month with the help of Hernandez’s mother, interior decorator Clariza Hernandez, who had come up with three furniture pieces to jumpstart the fledgling firm.

“We have a standing lamp, a sun-inspired hanging lamp, and a center table. Aside from cogon, we used other materials such as scrap metal, wood, and glass,” Hernandez said.

“We will be opening our own showroom very soon and we are contemplating on six to seven new designs to be displayed there and to be included in our brochures. We are also talking to different designers like Mr. Ito Kish to take part in our social enterprise by helping us out with our future designs,” he added.

Hernandez said cogon grass grows in 1.25 billion acres of land worldwide, a nuisance to farmers that can be a source of livelihood for poor communities.

“Farmers rid their lands of this pest by burning them or through the use of chemicals to treat them. So why not turn something considered as waste into something that will create value for underprivileged communities in far-flung areas by giving them jobs?” he said.

“This will be a steady source of income for our beneficiaries and probably a source of national pride when we go global. We hit the triple bottom line: People, Planet, Profit,” he added.

Aside from Hernandez’s and Samaniego’s Woven Hope, other winners in the PBSP BiD 2011 challenge were Healthy Sweets, a coconut sugar business proposed by Betty Marfil-More from Davao.

Hernandez and Marfil-More will represent the Philippines in an international business idea competition in Bogota city in Colombia.

Thirty-nine-year-old community entrepreneur Nathalie Arsonillo of Bukidnon, meanwhile, won in the BiD women entrepreneurship category for the cassava mobile processing unit developed by her group, Sustainable Growth for Rural Ventures Inc. (SUGRUVI).

The enterprise was developed to help cassava farmers in Bukidnon process their harvest and sell it for better prices in the market.

The BiD Challenge Philippines is an annual international online business plan competition that promotes poverty reduction through enterprise development.

Since 2007, PBSP, together with Citibank, holds the annual competition to recognize the most innovative, viable and socially developmental enterprises that combine the potential for making profit and reducing poverty in poor communities.

PBSP also offers mentoring and guidance to some participants whose business ideas have piqued their interest.