'Hapinoy' wins UN award/ Our man for ARMM OIC

Early this month, a Filipino social enterprise project aimed at helping poor micro entrepreneurs, won the United Nations’ Project Inspire Award, besting over 400 projects from all over the world. 

The project, “Hapinoy,” was set up in late 2006 by Paulo Benigno “Bam” Aquino and his business partner, Mark Ruiz, primarily to introduce to sari-sari store owners all over the country more progressive business methods, provide them with the knowhow and support to expand their operations in order to increase revenues and profits. The UN Award is a testimony to Hapinoy’s success as it now becomes part of the growing list of recognitions given to the project and its founders. Hapinoy was one of Go Negosyo’s Inspiring Entrepreneurs for 2010, one of the Bossing Awardees of the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company, and a finalist for the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2010.

The project has expanded across many provinces in north and south Luzon and presently has 150 Hapinoy Community Stores as full time members. These are located mostly in secluded areas where communities have only the sari-sari to depend on for the supply of their basic needs. Support for the project has been coming regularly from schools and the private sector. Micro-finance organizations have joined in, providing funds to shoulder Hapinoy’s needs for its member-stores. Training is given to the owners/operators of the stores (an overwhelming majority of whom are women), and access to volume discounts from suppliers is in place. Bam has been quoted as saying that he expects within the next two years, Hapinoy membership to grow to 150,000 out of 800,000 stores all over the country, making a significant and strong presence in the retail sector that is presently dominated by supermarket and grocery chains... 

Not surprisingly, Bam who is president of Microventures, Inc. which organized Hapinoy as one of its projects, was one of the Philippine Jaycees’ Ten Outstanding Young Men awardees for 2010 in the category of Social Enterprise and Community Development. He was also named one of last year’s Young Global Leaders by the World Economic Forum.

Those who have seen Bam in person or watched him on television will not fail to notice his uncanny resemblance to his uncle Ninoy Aquino, his father Paul’s kuya. Bam is the youngest of Paul and Melanie’s brood of three boys. Even his voice and his rapid-fire yet extremely clear manner of speaking will remind one of Ninoy.

That Bam is a spark plug who sets things in constant motion does not surprise people who know him up close, specially his instructors, professors, classmates and friends from the Ateneo de Manila where he graduated as valedictorian in grade school and high school, and earned his bachelor of science degree in management engineering as summa cum laude of the class.

After graduation, Bam worked with the ABS-CBN Foundation where his job entailed recruiting and organizing youth volunteers for socio-civic projects. Shortly after, he was appointed by former President Gloria Arroyo as commissioner at large of the National Youth Commission before he was promoted in 2003 to chairperson, making him at 26, the youngest in Philippine history to head a government agency. He resigned from his post in 2006 to concentrate on his work at Microventures.   

Empowering sari-sari store owners is an inspired move by Bam and his merry band of social enterprise activists out to put a happy face on a large number of our countrymen. Check out the Hapinoy site on www.hapinoy.com. 

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 A frontrunner in the race for the post of Officer-in-Charge of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) is a prominent Muslim Mindanao leader who has executive, legislative, foreign affairs and academic experience that makes him fit for the job.

At a recent media forum, Sultan Macabangkit Lanto’s credentials were bared. He has extensive experience in government service, having served as justice undersecretary, Ambassador to Egypt and Sudan, and tourism undersecretary for promotions. He also served as speaker of the Second Regional Assembly for the then Autonomous Government for Central Mindanao, and represented the second district of Lanao del Norte during the 9th Congress where he chaired the House committee on Muslim affairs.

 As to his academic credentials, he has a law degree from the University of the Philippines, and taken PhD and masteral studies at New York University in New York. He was a Fulbright-Hays fellow and government scholar on a Commission of National Integration Scholarship Grant.

Lanto supports President Aquino’s stand in rejecting calls for an all-out war against the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the suspension of the Mindanao peace talks. He said an all-out war policy “would only worsen the age-old conflict in the southern region of the Philippines since history tells us that a just and lasting peace could only be attained through the negotiating table, not through the barrel of the gun.”

The government’s resolve to pursue peace in Mindanao should not be mistaken as a sign of weakness, he said. “The high road to peace that President Aquino is taking should include a relentless effort to enforce the rule of law and wage an all-out campaign against lawless elements such as the Abu Sayyaf bandits and MILF renegades.”

If he is appointed OIC by President Aquino, Lanto’s reform agenda for ARMM includes eradicating graft and corruption, dismantling private armies, supporting the ongoing peace process with the MILF, launching an all-out campaign against loose firearms, and cleansing the voters list “to reform the tarnished image of the election process in the region.”

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