The passionate Nanette Medved-Po

Nanette Medved-Po, who was recently honored in New York as one of Asia Society’s Game Changer awardees, remembers the moment she realized as clearly as she saw the bright Manila sky that life expected much of her.

The former actress, who once portrayed the Filipino super heroine “Darna,” was high up on a float during a parade of the Metro Manila Film Festival that was inching its way amid a throng of fans along Roxas Boulevard.

“I was in one of the floats, and  people of all age groups were there, really looking up to us. It was not just me, personally, that they were looking up to, but I think Filipinos really look up to people in the public eye with a certain sense of awe. And with that comes incredible power, right? The public is almost surrendering a power to certain people to influence them.” Yes, even before social media gave them a name, “influencers” were already in our midst.

“I thought that if I had a little bit of power to influence, I would really hate to waste that by influencing people on the wrong things. So I kept telling myself, what should I do to be a positive influence to people who are looking up to me? I felt like it would be a real travesty if I was blessed with something and I squandered it on something trivial,” says this wife and mother of two teenagers.

Ironically, it was after her stint in show business, where her time was “completely consumed by my work,” that Nanette married both passion and purpose.

“I think that just to be fair, everyone at some level wants to be helpful, right? I don’t think that is something that’s unique to me. I probably have the same level of desire to be helpful as anyone else. But I think the difference is, I was blessed enough to have a little bit of a soap box or a megaphone because of who I was in the industry. I had the opportunity to take that desire and be helpful. And to turn it into something bigger than maybe others (could), because I had an avenue to do so.”

After being abroad and away from the public eye, she returned to the Philippines with both passion and purpose still simmering inside her. Passion and purpose found a pulpit and a podium, indeed, in Nanette.  And she used that to spread “Hope.”

Her passion was to help uplift the state of education in the country. How to accomplish that beyond dole-outs?

Nanette, who graduated summa cum laude with a degree in Finance and Entrepreneurship from Babson College in Massachusetts, believed starting a social enterprise was the most sustainable way to help. The liquid of life brought her idea to life.

“What is the simplest product I can find? Something not subject to trends? So I thought, water! Water is a basic necessity, it’s not subject to any trends or flavor profiles and it doesn’t spoil,” says Nanette, who was also one of  Forbes’ “Heroes of Philanthropy” in 2017.

Nanette launched Hope in 2012 to demonstrate that businesses that invest in social good would be rewarded by the market.

Now, where to channel the profits from the business? She decided on building classrooms. “During the time of President Noynoy Aquino, building classrooms was really a priority project of the President, because the classroom gap at the time was about 68,000 classrooms. He really made it a priority to try and close that gap during his administration. I said, ‘Oh, that’s an easy to understand investment, because a classroom is tangible, you can touch it,” explains Nanette, who points out that project “Hope” is “administration agnostic.”

“I said let’s get a simple product, and match it with a simple idea that you can trust — water equals classrooms. It’s very simple. So when you go to a convenience store, whether you are the driver of a tycoon or a tycoon, you can give equally to the building of our education infrastructure. You’re democratizing the investments in social good. In the past, in order for you to participate in philanthropy or these kinds of things, you had to have means. In this case, you don’t need to be rich, we can all give equally to the development of our country.” One bottle of water at a time.

“So, 10 years ago, we started the journey, and it’s been very difficult. I cannot say that it wasn’t without challenges.  But I think that if you are driven by purpose, you can weather challenges. We didn’t look too far ahead, because if you look too far ahead, medyo nakakatakot di ba? So I just focused on just putting one foot in front of the other. Just think about today, what’s going to happen today. And at some point, if you do that consistently enough, it actually adds up to something meaningful.”

Hope in a Bottle commits 100 percent of profits to building public school classrooms in partnership with the Department of Education. In the past 10 years, it has built over 120 classrooms all around the Philippines, especially in Mindanao. Isn’t Nanette a super heroine in real life, as well?

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Asia Society, which honored Nanette with the Game Charger award, recognizes individuals, organizations, and movements that have “inspired, enlightened, and shown true leadership in areas that reflect Asia Society’s core pillars of policy and business, arts and culture, and education.”

The other high-profile personalities honored by the group in this year’s program included former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

“It is an incredible honor to be one of the recipients of this year’s Asia Society Game Changer Awards,” said Nanette after she received the award. “I hope that any work we have done might inspire others to be unafraid to try and be the change they want to see in the world.”

In 2014, Nanette’s social enterprise expanded into agriculture interventions to improve the livelihood of smallholder farmers. This led to the “Million Tree” program, which not only provides free high quality coconut seedlings and market access to farmers, but also builds 100 percent additional carbon sequestration capacity in the Philippines. In 2018 another environmental program was introduced through “Aling Tindera.”

It takes a village for any endeavor to succeed. But it also takes a supportive spouse.

“There’s no way that I can do what I do if I didn’t have my husband’s (Chris Po’s) support. So much of what I do really relies on his ability to be forgiving of the things I’m passionate about. So he’s a wonderful, wonderful support. Actually, when I had to fly to New York for Game Changers, he said he wanted to go and really be there to support the work and I couldn’t have asked for a better husband.”

We ended our interview in tears. Because I asked Nanette her Christmas wish.

“Now, you’re going to make me cry. I think in the world, unfortunately, we find ourselves very broken.  And so I feel people have to stop focusing on the noise. So much in life is noise. If you can just focus on what’s really important in life — your family, doing right by one another — I think the world would be a much better place. And God knows the world needs it now. That’s my wish.”