The Golden Years - 50th Anniversary of Ayala Foundation Inc.

 Ayala Foundation at 50 - the Golden Years

By

Vicky P. Garchitorena

50^th Anniversary of AyalaFoundation Inc.

March 23, 2011

Thank you so very much, Jaime, for your very kind words. It is really I who should thank you, for having  given me the opportunity to work with the foundation.  These past 22 years have been the best years of my life, primarily because you, Jaime, and Fernando have allowed me to spread my wings and to fly as high as I can,  with your full and unstinting support  and friendship.

I must say that,  in addition to the three factors your mentioned—passion, commitment, and partnership—the foundation’s successes  have  been due in large measure to the inspiring and empowering leadership that the three of you have gifted us with. We have also been blessed with a constant and continuing harvest of foundation executives and staff who have given so generously of themselves. Each one of them and their teams  have imbued the foundation with that rare quality of a dynamic institution where each one has found his or her individual passion. I was also fortunate in having met Mrs. McMicking, whose gentle ways, quiet generosity, and graciousness captured my imagination as a role model for us at the foundation.

I almost cannot believe that  my journey at the foundation has spanned 22 years, almost half of its existence.  

Parang kahapon lamang.

It seems like only yesterday when I met Jaime Augusto and Fernando for breakfast at the coffee shop of the Mandarin Hotel in July 1989. As we talked about their vision for the foundation, it quickly became clear to me that I had found my home.

From my first day at work, our Chairman and Vice Chairmen were deeply involved in charting the course of the foundation. They supported our ideas, innovations and initiatives, not only with funding but, more importantly, with their presence, their interest, their insights, their support, and their encouragement.

Together, we began a  journey to transform the foundation into one of the most dynamic, strategic, pioneering development institutions in the country. From a P3 million budget in 1989, it is now at a level of about P300 million a year. From a staff of about 25, we are now at about 140.

The museum at that time was opened to visitors only by appointment. Today it is a gleaming “crown jewel” in  Greenbelt, attracting about 100,000 visitors a year and hosting exciting events almost every week, from cutting edge exhibitions in the visual arts to jazz, to lectures on design, Philippine history, and culture. Its collection has been augmented by purchases and loans of exquisite pieces, capped by the stunning gold collection that, experts say, may necessitate a review of our country’s  history.

The managers and staff were then housed in the museum and in the Makati Stock Exchange Building, but they might as well have lived on either side of the Pacific Ocean - art and culture on one side and social development on the other. They did not really know each other and had no idea of what each group was doing. Over the years, we have developed a strong team of dedicated individuals who respect each other, and eagerly seek ways of working together to enrich and sustain each program.

TRANSFORMATION AND EVOLUTION

How did we achieve it?

Our first major decision was to rename the foundation – from Filipinas Foundation to Ayala Foundation. This move positioned the foundation as the concrete expression of the Ayala Group’s corporate social responsibility. At the same time, it allowed the companies to use CSR as a strategic management tool, then a very novel  idea and a far cry from the prevailing conservative notion of one’s left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing.

So the first order of the day was to find the best solutions to the social problems that beset the companies. For Ayala Land, it was the need to develop a good relocation program for informal settlers on their properties. The prevailing solutions then were to file ejection cases, which could take forever, or to use the military, which would have been a PR nightmare and did not conform to our values. Together with Ayala Land,  we developed the Integrated Community Development Program. Our social workers undertook painstaking social preparation visits with the relocatees, explaining the process and what they could  expect. The families were  given a small lot with a starter home in a developed property not far from schools, markets, and jobs. In addition, one member of each family was offered skills training that can be parlayed into a job or a loan to set up micro-enterprise. Also, their formal and informal leaders were trained to  manage their homeowners’ association,  youth club,  mother’s circle, and cooperative,  so that we leave behind a legacy of an empowered community. The program was then considered a best practice in relocation.

EDUCATION AT ITS CORE

However, we kept true to the initial vision of our founders that education was the key to improving the quality of life of every Filipino and through them, to the full and equitable development of the country.

As the needs of the country had evolved, we transformed our  programs  from voc-tech scholarships to a number of strategic educational initiatives to improve the quality of education in our public school system, where 90% of our children and youth are enrolled. Among them:

CENTEX, which runs two public schools in Tondo and Batangas offering very bright children of very poor families the very best quality education. It was conceived as a laboratory school to determine what interventions can be introduced to the public education system to improve the quality of education. About 1,000 children are enrolled in the two schools at any one time, and our first batch of kindergarten students are entering their third year in college. DepEd Sec Armin Luistro , who recently visited CENTEX Tondo without prior notice to the principal, sent a text message to us saying how impressed he was, “not just by the facilities and programs but most importantly, by the teachers’ competence and dedication. Such a great school needs to be duplicated, perhaps at a lower cost.”

GILAS, a Multisectoral Social Consortium convened by the foundation, together with DepEd, CITC, corporations, business associations and funding agencies to put computer labs with internet access in all our public high schools.

With funding  support from the members of the consortium, legislators, as well as the Filipino diaspora in the US and matching funds from local governments, GILAS has to date connected more than 3,000 public high schools to the internet. It is transforming a whole generation of Filipinos into computer and internet literate adults capable of competing  in the workforce, whether here or abroad.

GILAS is arguably the largest private-sector led nationwide program in education which has had a significant impact on the sector it focused on. The government has since announced, first that it will sustain the computer labs with monthly allocations; and lately, that DepEd will finish the program by June this year.

It is also, we believe,  a best practice in Public-Private Partnership for Development and an example of how competitors in the business arena can rise above their commercial interests to work together for a national good.  In fact, it was cited in the Philippine Government Report on the Millennium Development Goals as a best practice in global partnerships.

Text2Teach is also a technology based delivery system for learning videos on science, math and English for Grades 4, 5, and 6. It is coupled with intensive teacher training to maximize the power of the videos.. With initial funding from Nokia, Globe and  other companies, it has improved the NAT scores  in about 400 under-resourced elementary schools.  I am delighted to announce that  we have reached an agreement with Nokia, Pearson Foundation, Globe, and DepEd to bring the project to 850 more schools starting this June.

To reach out to minority groups, the Education and Livelihood Skills Alliance aims to improve the quality of education in public schools in Muslim Mindanao. With funding from USAID, the alliance train teachers, PTAs, and Local School Boards to work together on the project.

MyLibrary is a new program launched by the Filipinas Heritage Library last year in partnership with Chevron, to address the paucity of public libraries. It aims to refurbish public libraries to make them safe, attractive places with current reference materials and interesting story books to engage one’s imagination. In addition,  the librarian and teachers are trained to start  and sustain a reading campaign to make our children independent readers and lifelong learners.

But even with the success of these educational initiatives , we realize that we cannot be monitoring and sustaining all of them. We have therefore decided to launch a new program called Enabling Education Communities. It is a program to harness the power of multisectoral partnerships at the local level to prioritize the education of our children. An Education Summit is held to get a commitment from: the parents to make sure their children stay in school; the DepEd to deliver good quality education; the local government to offer leadership and resources; and the business community and civil society to support these efforts.

Beyond academic excellence, the Ayala Young Leaders Program was launched 13 years ago to develop values-based servant leaders for the future. It has since become one of the most prestigious youth leadership programs in the country.  Its alumni now undertake their  own social development programs through their 23 chapters. And, in response to persistent requests from universities to train more student leaders, we have developed a campus based and  community based leadership program that follows the format of the annual Ayala Young Leaders Congress.

ENVIRONMENT

Ayala Foundation’s most successful environmental program is its Solid Waste Management program. It was piloted in a few Ayala-owned buildings with funding from the UNDP to educate building owners, administrators, and workers in the principles of segregation and recycling to reduce the amount of waste that has to go to our landfills. Today, the vast majority of buildings, mall tenants, residential condominiums, and subdivisions in Ayala developments have integrated the principles of SWM into their operations. Hundreds of tons of waste material are recycled into useful products; saving millions of pesos in trucking fees and giving additional income to livelihood groups in the communities around the developments.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP

The most significant and innovative program of the foundation in entrepreneurship is our Technology Business Incubator Program. With funding from the World Bank and through a strong partnership with the University of the Philippines and a large number of researchers, scientists, and venture capitalists, TBI has assisted tech start-ups; run tech boot camps; hosted forums on innovative technologies; and harnessed venture capitalists to invest in struggling technology-based enterprises.

The program has focused attention on an area that before then has been largely ignored – the needs of budding entrepreneurs for practical training and hand-holding in the challenging arena of technology.

DIASPORA PHILANTHROPY

Possibly the best example of the foundation’s ability to blaze new trails is our entry into the realm of diaspora philanthropy. Ayala Foundation USA was started in the year 2000 with the thought that perhaps some of the overseas Filipinos were already in a position to go beyond sustaining their families to giving back to the cities and towns where they grew up.

Despite the huge challenges of practically flying blind in a country as big as the United States, we found highly respected, successful Filipino Americans to serve on our board as well as thousands of FilAms who were just searching for ways of giving back to the country of their birth. Over the past ten years, AFUSA was able to generate about $10.5 million from about 7,000 donors.

Late last year, we successfully turned the foundation over to its natural stakeholders – the Filipino Americans themselves - who now lead the Philippine Development Foundation. Its focus will be on how to create a strong and robust science and technology sector as the impetus for accelerating economic growth and improving our global competitiveness.

MANGYANS ANCESTRAL LAND TITLE

One of the programs we are proudest of is our partnership with the Mangyans of Mindoro through the initiative of Jaime and Bea. Through scholarships, there are now a number of Mangyan college and voc-tech graduates working in the community. But their greatest success is in obtaining their Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title over more than 5,000 hectares of land. The challenge is now to harness the wisdom of the elders together with the modern skills of those who have been formally educated in order to oversee the sustainable development of their ancestral domain.

THE AYALA BRAND

Our 50th  anniversary logo includes the three words - ENVISION, EMPOWER, EXCEL

These words echo the values that drive the Ayala Brand. Indeed, we at the Foundation are ever conscious that we too must operate at the same levels of innovation, excellence and good governance that the Ayala Group has come to be known for.

So Ayala Foundation,  under the leadership of our Board of Trustees, has played an important part in:

(1)   The launch of the Ayala Group-wide  Social Initiatives focused on the three Es of

Education, Entrepreneurship and the Environment

(2)   The mandate given to all the companies to integrate their corporate social responsibility into the very core of their operations and to find that sweet spot where the public good especially for those at the base of the pyramid, is served in a sustainable and profitable manner;

(3)   The commitment to embed  the principles of sustainable development into their business models and to report on this effort through the first- ever conglomerate-wide Sustainability Report in the country.

On the part of the foundation, and as we look forward to the next 50 years, we are looking at three other words to guide us: STRATEGIC, SCALABLE, SUSTAINABLE. These will be the types of programs that we will focus on:

(4)    Strategic programs that make a permanent improvement in the lives of the individuals and communities we seek to serve.

(5)   Scalable programs that can be replicated nationwide to ensure that all Filipinos can  benefit from them.

(6)   Sustainable  programs that will continue beyond us.

THE NEXT 50 YEARS OF AYALA FOUNDATION

As our Chairman has said earlier, these goals can be achieved only by bringing together all the values that have guided us for the past 50 years –

- The passion to serve the poor and underprivileged

- The commitment to find the best solutions to the most complex and difficult social problems that beset them

-        The humility to ask help from others who share with us our vision for our country and our people, so that in strong bonds of partnership, patriotism, and friendship, we can achieve the lofty goals we set for ourselves.

Tonight, we recommit ourselves to those ideals:

-To envision a future that embraces all Filipinos

-To empower our community partners to shape their own future

-To excel in everything we do in the service of the country and our people

Through strategic, scalable, and sustainable programs that will live on beyond any one of us in this room tonight.

On behalf of our trustees, officers, and staff, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for joining us in this celebration of our enduring partnership. We look forward to working with you all in the next 50 years!

Mabuhay and God bless you all!

Womensphere Global leadership Award

September 27, 2012

New York, New York

               Thank you very much for this award, which I accept in all humility.

               I have been in development work for 35 years, but I stumbled into it via the socio-political route.

               I was always politically active, joining the Jaycees’ Operation Quick Count,  supporting candidates for the Presidency as far back as the 1960s, attending rallies and distributing leaflets with my nephews and nieces in tow as well as my students. When I got married however, I dropped out of the political scene as our family grew with the addition of  five children.

               Even when martial was declared by then President Ferdinand Marcos, it was primarily my husband who got involved as a defense attorney for one of our country’s statesmen, former Senator Jose Diokno, who had been summarily picked up and detained.

               It took the assassination of former Senator Benigno Aquino to wake me up from my complacency as it woke up the Filipino people from their stupor.  The arrogance of the deed – done in broad daylight in an airport that had been cordoned off by at least a thousand soldiers – was the straw that broke the camel’s or in the case of the Philippines, the carabao’s back.

               People queued in line around the clock to view his bloodied remains at the Santo Domingo Church. Millions of people  from all walks of life followed his cortege and lined the streets in what was hailed as the largest funeral march in history. My husband and I joined many organizations that mushroomed in the protest movement. My main group was the Alliance of Women for Action Towards Reform – a group of high –powered women with passion and patriotism. We sent the first ever Open Letter to Mr. Marcos that was signed and published by the opposition press. We were often at the front of the rallies, as the organizers felt that our presence would deter violence from the military.  As our  protest rallies grew in intensity and size, Marcos was forced to call a “Snap Election” to show that he still had the mandate of the people. It was the slain Senator’s widow – Corazon Aquino – who was the only one who could unite the bickering opposition parties.

While Marcos was declared the winner, there was clear evidence of widespread electoral fraud, and the first-ever peaceful people powered revolution then succeeded in overthrowing the  20-year reign of the conjugal dictatorship of the Marcoses.

After the Freedom Constitution was written and approved by the people, I was requested by President Aquino to run for Congress. I do not come from a political family and was not independently wealthy, but in  a moment of madness, I said yes. Who could say no to the Icon of the Philippines? My friends raised funds for my campaign, and thousands of volunteers, many of whom I did now know, joined my campaign. I came in Number Two in a field of 11, but the adventure into politics transformed me.

I saw close up the poverty of our people, living in squalor cheek-by-jowl with the enclaves of the rich in gated subdivisions. I walked on planks just inches away from gray, stinking canals; saw a dead baby on top of a table because the parents did not have money  to buy a box or to have him buried; crawled into a home with a ceiling so low we could not stand up. I saw homes where family members took turns sleeping, children with bloated bellies, open sores, or so skinny they looked like skeletons.

Despite our loss,  we held a Thanksgiving Mass where I thanked my donors and volunteers and supporters. There  I made a pledge to spend the rest of my life helping the poor and the disadvantaged. Like other entrepreneurs, I started in my garage, inviting my friends to teach women in my district sewing, crocheting, and making Christmas décor for export.  We expanded to an empty warehouse in a public school and in a National Mental Hospital, where we taught men and women who were mentally challenged but were trainable.

Thus started my 35-year journey into development. I retired last year as President of Ayala Foundation, one of the largest corporate foundations in the country. We focused on social  innovations using business disciplines to create programs that were strategic, scalable, and sustainable. We worked through partnerships to expand our reach. We tapped the overseas Filipinos, especially the Filipino-Americans, to give back to the country of their birth and heritage.

Our largest and most successful program was GILAS, an initiative to put  computer labs with internet access in all our public high schools across our 7,107 islands. By creating a multisectoral social consortium composed of national and local government, hardware and software companies, funding agencies, and the overseas Filipinos, we raised about $7M and connected about 3,600 public high schools effectively giving around 4 million underprivileged youth computer and internet literacy. We then turned the project over to the Department of Education, which has completed the program to cover ALL public high schools. GILAS is considered the largest, private-sector led program in public education, and is seen as one of the most successful public-private partnerships in development. The private sector piloted the program, showed proof of concept, brought it  to scale, and then turned it over to its natural owner.

But I have not forgotten my early interest in politics. My 50 years of engagement in all sectors of society – government, private sector, and the NGO community – has led me to believe that only by finding a way to bring them all together can we really achieve the kind of future we dream of for our country and out people. 

A group of former high level government officials established InciteGov, of which I was founding chair. We developed a program that shows how Politics, Governance, and Development are all inter-related and that each one needs the other two to flourish. The current administration of President Benigno Aquino III clearly shows the truth of this paradigm. As the only son of two Philippine icons – Senator Ninoy Aquino whose assassination triggered the People Power Revolution, and President   Corazon Aquino, whose death catapulted him into the national consciousness – he has pushed a reformist agenda that is already reaping success after success.

His unrelenting campaign against corruption, coupled with his pro-poor programs, acceptance of the private sector as the engine of growth,  has resulted in trailblazing economic and social development in the country. In only two years, our GDP growth rate is second only to China and our stock market has given investors the highest returns in Asia. The government’s Conditional Cash Transfer program has slowly brought 3 million families out of abject poverty. He has set universal health insurance as a short term goal.

On my retirement, I decided to bring the paradigm of Politics-Governance-Development to life through active participation in partisan politics. I have joined the The President’s party, the  Liberal Party of the Philippines, as the Vice President for the Women’s Wing. The Liberal party  is one of the oldest political parties in the country. It was the only party that did not join the one –party system of the Marcos. Last year,  the Liberal Party has done the unthinkable. It has opened its doors to sectoral formations – women, youth, labor, framers/fishers and the urban poor. This is the triumph of the decades-long struggle of the disadvantaged groups against the crony capitalism of the Marcos years, and the continued dominance of entrenched political dynasties and warlords through  patronage politics.

               I have accepted the humungous challenge of giving leadership to the Women’s Wing of the Liberal Party, especially since women cut across all the rest of the sectors – youth, farmers/fishers, labor, and urban poor.

               What do we hope to achieve?

1.      The development of the women themselves through education, skills training, livelihood, jobs, or enterprise development.

2.      The empowerment of the women through the realization of their self-worth and leadership training

3.      The development of strong, strategic, and sustainable women’s organizations so that they can have a collective voice in the national discourse.

4.      The identification of women leaders who can be trained, mentored, and supported for possible electoral or appointive positions in government.

In the political sphere, these sectors are often viewed as electoral votes to be bought by dole-outs or patronage. It is an unequal relationship of benefactor and beneficiary, where the women feel they are beholden to the politician who gave them $10 to vote for them, or gave them a recommendation to the government hospital for the treatment of a child.

We are starting to organize the women so that, as they come together behind shared ideals, shared values, and shared dreams, they can become a force to be reckoned with. The power of the ballot that they will hold in their collective hands can balance the equation. The politicians will need them as much as they need the politicians.

This will allow them to negotiate on an equal footing; demand basic services as a right and not as a privilege; demand good governance, transparency and accountability; demand to have a voice in the national discourse and a place at the table where decisions are made.

Last Saturday, we launched the very first provincial chapter of the Women’s Wing of the Liberal Party in Negros Occidental,  a province south of Manila. About 2,000 women came from cities and municipalities, from their farms and their homes, some with babies in their arms and children on their laps. They came on time, quietly took their places in the hall, listened to the speakers on liberalism, on the Liberal party platform of governance, on the President’s Social Contract, and on their role in crafting their own future.

They are the first wave in what we hope will be a tsunami of women standing up, moving forward, and claiming their right to be heard, to be educated, to be all they can be, to decide on the future of the Philippines.

It is a long road, and one fraught with stumbling blocks – husbands who might not want their women to be so bold; village elders who will scold them or humiliate them or laugh at them; politicians who might harass them or worse; women who do not understand why other women are entering the dirty world of politics.

I for one know that I may not see the fruits of my labor. But I will plant the seeds and hope that they find fertile soil in the hearts of minds of other women like the 2,000 women of Negros Occidental, who will finally take their destiny and their future  into their own hands to make sure that it will be far brighter for their children and their children’s children.

It is in their name that I accept this award, and in the name of the all women workers in development NGOs in the Philippines who laid the foundation for this brave new adventure of Empowering Women in Partisan Politics.