Making a difference through farming and community services

In the beginning of the year I had the opportunity to visit rural areas north of the Philippines, where I grew up as a kid. The place has changed a lot since last time I visited there 18 years ago. There were progress made, people are still happy but poverty is still abundant. Although most people survive with their basic needs through farming and foraging there are still a lot of people with no permanent jobs, no source of income. Most farms are tended manually, hard labour and no machines making farming ineffective and unproductive. Due to the lack of infrastructure there are a lot of hits and misses as well, some years are good, some years are bad with most farmers ending in heavy debts. Visiting the farms it dawned to me that we should be able to help the community, essentially give back to the community where I send some childhood years. Hence me and my brother hatched a brilliant plan of acquiring lands in the area, developing this lands and employing people. The ultimate goal is to be able to help over a thousand families in the area, that’s equivalent to over 5000 people, our way of giving back to the community and making a small difference on our own way in this very big wide world where we lived in.

Since I have my business to attend to we hatched the plan of having my parents involved. My brother will essentially manage the business, my parents will oversea local operations while I simply advise on business and strategic matters, essentially a very small portion of my non-working time to give back to the community. We are starting small helping 5 families to start with while keeping that ultimate goal in mind. How are we giving back to the community? Its essentially simple focusing on people, infrastructure and the environment.

• Build infrastructure to make farming much easier. Dams, water ways, power distributions, access roads

• Acquire struggling farms at a premium and employ the same farmers giving them a stable income on top of the premium paid for their farms.

• Develop the farms to become productive and sustainable

• Hire workers and pay them a much higher salary than what the local government pays their employees

• Provide housing for free

• Supplement their incomes with free food stuff

• Provide scholarship to deserving students

• Provide free health care and free medical outreach program by bringing competent doctors from Metro Manila during outreach programs

• Organize festivals for the community every after harvest, recognizing their hard work and dedication.

• Facilitate financial service, micro finance to start with

• Create clean, green and sustainable farms without harming the environment

• Replanting on deforested areas

This we do funded by our own pockets without any help from the government with the goal of being able to help a thousand families long term. Once we have proven success for this community services model we will expand, bringing in more external investments to the community from investors who share our principles, our ideals and our commitment to support and develop the community. If you are interested in participating to develop impoverish rural communities in the Philippines in your own small way please feel free to contact me.