by Niña Terol

(Originally published in the October 2009 issue of Cosmopolitan Philippines)

In many ways, my relationship with my country is like my relationship with my family. There are days when I’m extremely proud to be Pinoy. Then, there are other days–just like those moments of extreme parental angst or sibling animosity–when I just want to fly away, cut all my ties, and never look back.

Nonetheless, there are some things that will forever bind me to this country. Like blood, the soil we were born on will always be thicker than water.

Tongue Ties

Like our family names, our accents are undeniable. While at a world music festival at Malaysia last year, I tried to go for as long as I could without anyone knowing that I am Filipino since my name is Spanish, I am Eurasian, and my first language is English. The moment I spoke up at a press conference, however, heads turned and I heard people say, “She’s Filipina!” Later on, another journalist came up to me and said, “I love Filipino accents–the way you roll your Rs, it’s so sexy!” Apparently, just like many other nationalities, we have very distinct accents that no amount of English twang will be able to hide. The best way to deal? To interact with others in ways that bring bride to our country.

This is “The Life”

Life here is never boring. Evening gigs, holiday fiestas, beach outings, food sprees, walking tours, cultural performances, scandals to watch over YouTube–we have them all. Simply take your pick!

And, in as much as things can get exciting, then can get extremely cozy as well. There are days when I simply crave for chicken tinola, sinigang na baboy, pork adobo, or chicken inasal. On Saturday mornings when it’s chilly, I’m reminded of childhood days of watching cartoons, my taste buds craving for champorado.

Citizen Pinoy

We may hate our government or the people around us, but we can’t hate the values our nation was founded on. Yes, the government bureaucracy is corrupt, systems are crooked (if any exist at all), and people can sometimes be downright stupid, greedy, or evil. I hate the large potholes that the city government has left on my street, and I can’t stand to see children begging on the sidewalk while the Powers that Be spend millions to fund their lavish lifestyles. No matter how low things seem to be, however, we can’t deny the fact that our forefathers fought valiantly against oppression, that it was we Filipinos who introduced People Power to the world, and that our nation was founded on ideals of truth, freedom, dignity, patriotism, brotherhood, faith, and love of family.

Home and Heartstrings

This is where I was born and raised; where I spent my wonderful childhood days; where I stumbled, fell, made mistakes, and learned about life. Here, too, is where I met the man I’m spending the rest of my life with. Wherever else I may go in the future, it is here where my heart was formed. However I look at my life, it has the Philippines etched all over it–and that’s not always a bad thing.

* * *

Source URL: http://theartofchangemaking.wordpress.com/2009/11/02/pilipinas-kong-mahal-in-cosmos-on-my-mind-october-issue/

By Nina Terol. Photos by Walter Villa

from Entrepreneur Philippines Magazine, March 2008

If someone were to tell you that they had just come from Payatas with an upscale fashion find, you would likely think you had heard it all wrong. The word “Payatas,” after all, connotes images of destitute surroundings– a squalid area where impoverished families live atop mountains of garbage. It is hardly the environment you would expect for creativity and innovation, yet this is what Rags 2 Riches (R2R), a social development enterprise, found when it dug deeper into the Payatas situation.

Bro. Javy Alpasa, S.J., a Jesuit scholastic who ministers to the community around the Payatas dumpsite, relates that although he had seen clear evidence of pastoral growth among the Payatas folk, their economic circumstances had not been improving alongside with it. He then pondered the situation with a group of young professionals who wanted to do something to help.

Their assessment: Although Payatas had become well-known as the “rag capital of the Philippines,” the nanays [literally "mothers," but here it means "women"] producing the rags were making only a measly P1 for each rag sold. In contrast, the retailers were making in huge profits of as much as P15 to P20 per rag.

They then suggested this solution: eliminate the middlemen and add value to the merchandise so the nanays can make more money from their efforts.

But most everybody agreed that the solution being offered was much easier said than done. Until one day when, during Bro. Javy’s theology class at the Ateneo de Manila University, a “heckler” whom he did not think much of as a student started the ball rolling by giving a surprise donation of P10,000. The student simply said that he had received the money as a graduation gift and he wanted to put it to really good use.

That donation was followed by another one of the same amount from another of Bro. Javy’s theology students. With
P20,000 now in his hands, he mustered enough confidence to meet again with the same group of concerned young professionals, this time to suggest a formal structure for putting their ideas into action. Thus was Rags 2 Riches born.

The original idea of the young professionals was to create “designer rags” that could be sold to the market at a premium. They came up with so many ideas and took so many steps to make this happen, but to no avail. Eventually, however, through a series of serendipitous events, they ended up at the doorsteps of Rajo Laurel, one of Asia’s top fashion designers.

As the group tells it, when they presented Laurel with a sample of the well made rags done by the Payatas women, he casually held it up with a twinkle in his eye, joined two ends, added three buttons, and said: “Now it’s a wine-holder.”

Angeline Benavidez, R2R’s vice president for sales and a long-time friend of the acclaimed designer, recalls that moment: “Rajo was so excited when he saw the product. After that, he asked us to leave the rags with him so he could make a prototype. The very next morning, he himself called us to say that the prototypes were ready.”

The end result of that meeting was an initial line of 11 well-designed accessory products made from rags–bags, totes, purses, and other personal items–under the “RIIR by Rajo” brand. They were to become an instant hit among the upscale, socially aware fashionista crowd.

Benavidez says that Laurel got himself “very involved” in the entire production process–from developing the prototypes to teaching the nanays how to carefully weave the products and assure quality control, and from determining the pricing and branding of bags to their retail distribution.

Laurel himself pushed the product “because he strongly believed in it,” Benavidez recalls. “In fact, during a fitting at the House of Laurel [his fashion shop], he personally brought in his clients so he could explain the project and show
the products to them. His clients started making orders on the spot.”

According to Mary Ann Lim, the president of R2R and concurrently its vice president for product development, one of their first big challenges was to get the nanays to accept the new standards and methods that had to be put into place to assure first-rate product quality. It was not easy at the start, but when the newly designed products were released to the market and the women saw for themselves how much the buyers appreciated their handiwork, they began to be truly quality-conscious and extra careful in making the products.

Laurel himself recounts how they were able to change the attitude of the nanays towards their enterprise: “My idea was really to change their views–to create a paradigm shift. I patiently explained to them that if they can give value to the work and give even more added value by designing it well and giving it an aesthetic touch, they can make the product command a good price.”

All these attitude-changing efforts paid off handsomely. The fashion designer rags the women made sold very well, drawing such high-profile customers and fans as Kris Aquino, Celine Lopez, Lucy Torres- Gomez, and many more celebrities. The R2R management has become so confident of the quality of the designer rags that they are hoping they would one day get to Hollywood and be sported by the likes of Angelina Jolie.

The R2R management believes that what makes their designer rag products click is not only the brand or the name behind it but, even more important, also the heartwarming success story behind the enterprise.

“We didn’t want to approach the merchandise as a ‘pity buy‘,” says Mark Ruiz, an Ateneo de Manila University management professor and R2R’s vice president for marketing. “Instead, we approached it as a product that people would really want to buy and use because it was worth their money. On top of that, of course, there’s the really powerful human story of the caring and passion that went into the product’s making.”

Aside from Rajo Laurel, several other first-rate professionals volunteered their services to make the R2R product launch possible. Among them were Jake Versoza for photography, Krista Ranillo for endorsements, Maylin Vergara of the beauty salon Propaganda for makeup and styling, popular events director Robbie Carmona, and the models from the Philippines’ Next Top Model search who graced the R2R launching event.

With such star-studded support, R2R was able to parley its initial capital P20,000 in the designer rag products into sales revenues reaching P200,000 during the first three months alone. The market demand for the products has been growing since then, so R2R has been steadily expanding production.

Bam Aquino, a media personality and well-known social entrepreneur who is one of R2R’s board members, is convinced that they did something right by establishing a social enterprise instead of a nonprofit organization.

Part of R2R’s long-range plans is to also venture into men’s accessories and home accessories for both the domestic and export markets.

Bro. Javy makes this observation about R2R’s social enterprise model: “It’s a win-win formula. The Payatas women earn more, and the investors hopefully would earn more over time, certainly more than what they could make from time deposits or from putting up other enterprises. The adage ‘A high tide raises all boats’ rings true here.”

Indeed, the experience of R2R has shown that in social development, encouraging productive social partnerships between and across sectors is much better than espousing one-way philanthropy and charitable dole outs to the poor. This is because such productive social partnerships teach people to experiment, to innovate, and to compete well with other businesses to survive and thrive.

R2R merchandise is currently available at:
HOUSE OF LAUREL
6013 J. Villena cor. Manalac Street, Poblacion, Makati City
Telephone: (02) 426-6101 locals 3440 and 3441
Mobile: 0905-32739999
E-mail: r2rcorp@gmail.com
Website: http://slb.ph/r2r/riir/riirhome.html

At the Homeless World Cup, people of all colors, shapes, and sizes converge under different flags that represent different languages, political systems, ideologies, and religions. There are teams from 48 countries in six continents, some belonging to global superpowers whose flags have instant recall and recognition, others to little-known states that are still seeking recognition.

Despite these differences, everyone here knows three languages that have made the Homeless World Cup a symbol of one huge global village converging toward one goal: the language of sports, the language of music, and above all, the language of respect.

The transformative and uniting power of sports is the main reason why the Homeless World Cup was established. Its founder, globally acclaimed social entrepreneur Mel Young, recognized that sports—football, in particular—has the power to uplift spirits, rebuild broken lives, and create new paths for a better future. According to Homeless World Cup research, more than 94 percent of participants have said that being part of the Homeless World Cup has had a positive impact on their lives. Seventy-seven percent have made significant changes as a direct result of the program, coming off drugs and alcohol; moving in homes, jobs, and education; becoming coaches and players; repairing relationships; and becoming social entrepreneurs.

Even those who are not playing football and simply cheering on the stands are feeling the energy of unity and positivity permeating through the Arena Civica in Milan, Italy, where this year’s games are held. Through the power of music, people can cheer, sing, dance, laugh, and enjoy each other’s company without having to struggle with words and syntax.

Leading the global cheering squad is Paul Zialcita, a percussionist and performance artist from the Philippines. Using five-gallon water bottles (called “aquadrums”) and a large recycled trash can, he has been drumming not only for Team Philippines but for other teams as well, and teaching the players themselves how to use these drums so that teams can have their own built-in cheering section. Through this approach, footballers gamely take the bottles on and drum and cheer for other countries—even for those who will be or have been their opponents through the course of the games.

During the opening parade in the streets of Milan (Photo: Debbi Shaw)

John Marshall is a player for Team Scotland, and even while Scotland and the Philippines have already slugged it out on the pitch, John and his team were seen rooting for Team Philippines during the latter’s game with Australia. Alejandro Miranda, meanwhile, is a volunteer pitch manager who hails from Chile and lives in the United States. He was seen cheering for the Spanish football team, whom he regards as “the best team. They’re very kind, very respectful.”

Sports and music have been building bridges in a world where lines are drawn too strongly and too often. In an interview with football star Dariusz Dsziekanowski, formerly a player for Polish teams, he talked about the importance of bringing back respect at a time when life moves too fast for people to pay attention to one another.

“Respect—this word brings a huge message to the people,” he said. “Life moves very fast. Sometimes you miss the train and find yourself standing in the station wondering where all the time has gone, and nobody will care about you. It’s important that we bring back the simple things, like saying ‘Hello, how are you?’ ‘I respect you’, ‘I don’t judge you’, ‘I respect what you’re doing.’”

When it’s difficult to verbalize our feelings and expressions, especially in a setting such as this where the arena has become a melting pot of peoples and cultures, Darius recommends one very simple thing:

“Just respect and smile at each other.”

© FOTO UP AGENCY

Having watched the film twice, first on Imax and next on a regular theater, I can’t help but agree that The Joker is a better reference for the film than its real protagonist, Batman. Spawned right from the center of Limbo, with all the qualities we find loathsome, pitiful, and yet terrifying, The Joker is a reminder of everything we don’t want human beings to become. Quoting Corliss again, the late Heath Ledger’s Joker “observes no rules, pursues no grand scheme; he’s the terrorist as improv artist.”

But I’d take it a few notches further and say that The Joker is the film’s “inverted social conscience,” the dreaded, deadly disease that makes society work together to find a cure. It is he who asks the hard questions; he who challenges the taken-for-granted assumptions; he that pushes humanity to see how low they would really sink — or how far they could really rise. He is the ultimate “necessary evil” that forces us to see just what we’re really made of. A composite of everything that is wrong, perverse, and twisted in our society, it is he who nonetheless shows us our true potentials for greatness.

It just goes to show that, in the movies — as well as in politics and the rest of real life — there’s a lot we can learn from the bad guys. We cannot simply turn our eyes away from them, or pretend they’re not there, or believe that they will simply go away. They will not– for they are here to stay. But instead of ignoring them because they’re such “bad examples,” we should study them, dissect them — even if we don’t understand them — and see how we can stop the rest of the world from joining their ranks.

Crooks (trapos included) do have a purpose. They’re there to show us what can happen if we let ourselves slide too deeply.

Which brings us to Lesson # 2: Harvey Dent.

Gotham’s fearless, charismatic new district attorney is the ultimate tragedy of human potential. He starts out as everyone’s hero, Gotham’s “White Knight” who has come to save the day, except that when he collides with the dark forces we find that his foundation was too weak to stand against the very forces that ultimately subsumed him. This is what happens when we depend on one person to be our Messiah. People are people — even in this age of celebrities, icons, and “modern-day heroes” — and they will slip, or slide, or sink (sometimes very, very low). When we pin all our hopes on just one person — or one entity or one ideal — the results can be tragic. The solution is to empower everyone to be the source of the solution, which, ironically is what The Joker attempted to do in the hospital and ferry scenes — regardless of his twisted definition of the “solution”.

Lesson #3: When push comes to shove, trust people to do the right thing.

Speaking of the ferry scene, another point the movie made very well was that everyone, even the lowest scoundrels of society, has some emergency button of goodness within them that they can access and activate even at the most desperate times of their lives. Just give them a compelling reason and just enough time (but not too much) to think through their decision, and people will almost always gravitate toward the good. I’m no expert in human behavior and so I cannot vouch for this as truth, but I believe that when we put our faith in people — and they know how important their choices will be for everyone else on board — they will do their best to make the right decision. It won’t be easy, but it’s possible, even outside of Hollywood.

Lesson #4: Sometimes, the “right thing” (or person) is difficult to understand, or even recognize.

How will you know that you’ve done the right thing? How will you know that you’ve chosen the right person? You won’t — not at the onset, or not always. Because, sometimes, the person whom you thought was the answer will leave you disappointed and asking more painful questions. If Harvey Dent had lived and had been allowed to unleash the fullness of his newfound glory upon Gotham, what would have happened? We don’t know for sure, but we do know that we cannot allow something like that to happen here. We cannot allow ourselves to be bought by the winning smile, the boy-next-door look, or the Messianic pronouncements. Even when looking at one’s track record (as in Harvey Dent’s case), we have to go over every detail very, very carefully.

Conversely, we also cannot simply discount the “dark horse” as a nuisance entity or a subversive force that must be stopped. It’s possible for the totally misunderstood rebel to be exactly what we need. Sometimes, collective understanding arrives so slowly that we are not able to recognize a hero when we see one. So we cannot trust our gut or our intellect alone. When looking at people, we need to understand the context of their actions, and also the context of the decisions we need to make. In Gotham, as in real life, nothing is truly black or white.

Lesson #5: Sometimes, we need to live with lies in order to find our truth.

Nobody understood this better than Batman himself. He has had to perpetuate a lie in order to allow justice to prevail, even allowing Two-Face to be seen as the Knight in Shining Armor that everyone needed him to be. Sometimes, we need to live with a lie in order for truth, justice, and goodness to prevail — so that the delicate threads that weave our social fabric do not disintegrate and explode into chaos.

The challenge is discerning which lies we need and which ones we should never entertain.

(Niña Terol is Team RP’s vice chairperson for internal affairs. She sometimes imagines herself to be Rachel Dawes—without the tragic ending. She wrote this article originally for the Young Public Servants website).

Source URL: http://blogs.inquirer.net/philippineelections/2008/08/06/political-lessons-from-%E2%80%98the-dark-knight%E2%80%99/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/emeryjl/ / CC BY 2.0

First published in Starfish Magazine, Volume 2 Issue 2 (2007)

[Author’s Note: I first wrote this for Starfish Magazine in late 2006 (published in February 2007), before the mid-term elections. Reading this again, it seems to me that its theme rings even truer now–as we face soaring gas, food, and electricity prices; one government scandal after another; a poverty crisis that makes people gouge children’s eyes out just to sell them as organ donations; and even global uncertainty in the face of a U.S. recession and a potentially explosive election in the world’s last bastion of “old power”. Around 100 weeks to go ’till our very own “make or break elections,” it becomes even more imperative to look at the choices we have made in the past and how we can make transformational choices for the road ahead.]

–

If there is anything that the year 2006 has proven so far, it is that leadership—be it in the public or private spheres—has become much more challenging than ever.

The president’s star, which shone brightly only for a brief moment a few years ago, continues to dim rapidly even in spite of a rallying peso and reports of a strengthening economy. Our legislators are caught in a damn-if-you-do-damn-if-you-don’t bind in regard to the Charter Change (if they choose to be bought with favors and additional budgets, then they would have sold their souls; if, however, they choose to oppose the Powers That Be, then their constituents may just as well continue to starve). Private citizens, business owners, and agriculturists are still reeling from the aftermaths of the supertyphoons that battered all corners of the country. Our country’s mothers and homemakers, those who have to balance their duties as wife, mother, and income-earner, have to deal not only with rising gas, electricity, and commodity prices; they also have to deal with the fact that many young Filipinos, their children, are doing poorly and see nothing wrong with suicide, using illegal drugs, pornography, or paying for sex (according to the McCann Intergeneration Study of 2006, as cited in Newsbreak, August 14, 2006).

Indeed, now is probably not the best or the easiest time to be in a position of leadership or influence.

Nevertheless, these issues that have stung the Philippines like a poisonous snake bite may be just what the country needs to purge itself of the deadly toxins that have permeated the bureaucracy’s internal organs. By underscoring how current paradigms and practices of leadership, power, and influence are no longer effective in the age of a more vigilant civil society and a more involved, Web 2.0-savvy youth sector, these “crises” may lead us to discover more paradigms, new approaches, new roles, and new opportunities for curing our systemic ailments. They may bring to light a new leadership model that challenges—or integrates—those put forth by Niccolo Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, Jack Welch, John Maxwell, the Buddha, Jesus Christ, and all those other charismatic figures that have shaped the world’s perceptions of leaders and leadership.

The crises and challenges of 2006 just may have taught us that, in the absence of strong, principled, and inspiring leadership, we have no other choice but to become, in Mahatma Gandhi’s words, “the change we seek in the world.”

No longer such thing as “Divine Right”

Unlike in centuries past, the leaders of today can no longer invoke “Divine Right” as did the kings of yore or force someone else to recognize their leadership through war and oppression. They must be leaders not only by virtue of their electoral mandate, or their socio-economic dominance, or their seniority; they must have the moral ascendancy to make decisions that will affect people’s lives.

Likewise, today’s citizens are no fools—they will no longer bow down to an authority figure simply because his or her nameplate demands it. Today’s “followers” demand legitimacy, transparency, accountability, and character. But that’s not all; today’s leaders have to navigate very complex social, economic, political, and even psychological territories.

Joseph L. Badaracco is the Harvard Business School’s John Shad Professor of Business Ethics. He teaches a course called The Moral Leader, an MBA course where students discuss works of literature, such as The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli and Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro, in order to explore important dilemmas that confront leaders today. He says that one test of moral leadership is “not what kind of character you have or what your values are… [but] is the world different because of things you have done?”

Ultimately, Badaraco puts forth this definition of leadership as: “Leadership is a struggle by flawed human beings to make some important human values real and effective in the world as it is.”

Social entrepreneurship: Making values effective “in the world as it is”

One leadership model that is fast gaining prominence among civil society and development groups all over the world is social entrepreneurship. James C. Toole, Ph.D., President of the Compass Institute and a Teaching/Research Fellow in the University of Minnesota School of Social Work, in his afterword in the book Our Time is Now: Young People Changing the World (Pearson Foundation © 2005), defines social entrepreneurs as “those that use an entrepreneurial mindset to create social—rather than business-products and services.”

In the same book, Toole puts forth six dimensions for leadership under the social entrepreneurship model:

1. Personal leadership. “Be the change… Anyone who wants to change how a society thinks and acts will initially face scepticism or disinterest. Youth must at first sell not only an idea or a program, but themselves, to gain others’ trust. Leadership therefore must involve both ‘inner’ work (the person you are) and ‘outer’ work (what you accomplish).”

2. Visionary leadership. “Be a [boundary-breaker]. Having a dream is very different [from] becoming a change agent… The job of a change agent is to recognize when a part of society is stuck and the provide news ways to get it unstuck… Visionary leadership is about redirection. It is about both the process of change… and the end-goal.”

3. Knowledge leadership. “Be a learner… The message is clear. If you want to change the world, you have to study… Once youth change agents acquired training themselves, they often created systems for volunteers, communities, funders, and the government to catch up.”

4. Political leadership. “Be a marketer and a collaborator… Innovative or transformative ideas are often born as orphans. Nobody initially recognizes them or claims them as their own. The goal of political leadership, the fourth dimension of the framework, is to mobilize public will—to turn orphan ideas into mainstream thought. That includes recruiting volunteers, forming cross-sector partnerships, securing media attention, and ultimately changing public opinion.”

5. Organizational leadership. “Be an entrepreneur… That ‘weakness’ of youth is that they lack prior knowledge, resources, connections, and experience. What makes them organizationally powerful is that they are willing to see things in new ways, live on little money, turn their homes into offices, practice just-in-time learning, value the participation of other youth, seek partnerships, and enjoy new adventures. In most debates, this gives them the moral high ground—territory that is deeply important when one is trying to change the world.”

6. Societal leadership. “Be a Transformer… It is necessary to both change the world (reality) and how people see the world (perception). The first changes essential life conditions, but the second creates an environment in which much more can take place.”

The changing face of leadership

Social entrepreneurship is one way by which we can more actively participate in real change, but it is also not a cut-and-paste solution. Indeed, the face and the contexts of leadership are changing. Not only are we experiencing a shift from traditional politicians and first-generation tycoons to political neophytes and youth, business school-bred managers, but we are also seeing how much more complex it can be to lead effectively, and in the right way.

As the Philippine launches full-speed into election mode, expect many more hidden issues to surface and already-hot issues to boil over. Expect to uncover more questions that need resolution, but no answers to assuage our collective anxiety. Expect to see old faces with familiar platforms and new faces with familiar surnames, but (possibly) very little hope for a real move forward. Above all these, expect YOUR role as a citizen and as a potential social entrepreneur to become even more prominent in our country’s quest for self-actualization.

The face of the country’s leadership is changing. It could very well be yours.

Copyright © 2008 Niña Terol

I RECENTLY posed this challenge to some like-minded colleagues: draft a want ad for this country’s next president, then let’s see how we are able to articulate the skills, qualifications, and necessary track record of the Philippines’s Chief Executive. After all, we cannot even begin to seriously assess our current crop of presidential hopefuls if we don’t know what we are looking for in the first place. I honestly thought that it would be quite easy because the exercise had to be somewhat similar to writing an ad for a CEO of a large corporation. How hard could that be, right? (The power of Google, and cut and paste…)

Well, I apparently underestimated the task. While doing some online research on the subject it occurred to me that maybe my entire premise was wrong in the first place. The Philippines is not a large corporation. It is not large geographically, politically, economically, or even diplomatically the way the First World countries, or even China or India, are. It is not even a dark horse the way Russia is often viewed. In the local setting, the Philippines is not like one of those multinationals that are housed in one of the ritzier office spaces along Ayala Avenue. It might not even be located in any of the central business districts. If the Philippines were an enterprise, it could probably be considered a startup, or a relatively young SME at the most.

Therefore, the kind of president that we need is not somebody who will saunter into the office in an extremely expensive suit – with an army of executive assistants, senior vice presidents, and consultants in tow – and be a “boardroom executive.” We need someone who has the mindset of an entrepreneur and who will be able to dig through the mud (literally, sometimes) to get things done.

But because I’m a fan of social enterprises and social enterprises, I’d take it up a notch and venture to say that the Philippines could be likened to a social enterprise, and therefore needs a president who has the mindset of a social entrepreneur.

What’s in a social entrepreneur?

According to the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurs are “unusually courageous men and women that pursue their vision of a better world by applying extraordinary creativity and resourcefulness to some of the world’s most challenging issues. They are not just dreamers… They have the rare ability to ground their dreams in reality and translate them into pragmatic, goal-oriented and measurable action. As a result, they have produced some of the most innovative approaches to social, economic and political problems that continue to defy conventional means of action [boldface mine].”

On the other hand, Stacey Childress (2006) of the Harvard Business School, talks of the need for a “Theory of Change” – a belief about how actions will contribute to the fulfillment of a larger vision. This “theory” could be focused on either local or systemic change, but it has to define how the social enterprise’s activities will contribute to the big picture.

Social entrepreneurs, therefore, are visionaries – wild, passionate, big-picture thinkers – first and foremost. They are unafraid of dreaming of WHAT COULD BE; to them, “impossible” means “I‘ll Make it POSSIBLE.” Who in our current crop of presidentiable-wannabes thinks that way?

Moreover, social entrepreneurs are able to link current gaps with current givens and future possibilities in ways that are extremely innovative, creative, “out of the universe” and yet very, very logical. They are unafraid of asking the important question – “Why not?” – and going, “What next?” For instance, one of my favorite social enterprises, Rags 2 Riches, linked the existing realities of dismal economic conditions in Payatas and the nanays‘ current means of livelihood – rag-making – to the big dream of making “designer rags.” Throw renowned fashion designer Rajo Laurel into the mix, and you’ve got a kick-ass concept (which just recently won an international business plan competition) and beautiful bags that even Angelina Jolie will buy because (1) they’re great products and (2) they support fair trade.

Imagine this: If we could reinvent the Philippines using the social enterprise model, what would it look like? More importantly, are any of our politicians willing to take the risk of painstaking – but powerful – transformation? Or are they simply promising the same old Spartan slippers and simply rebranding them as Havaianas?

Social entrepreneurs also know what their goals look like and, therefore, how to know when they’ve already achieved them. Social enterprises are not just lofty causes filled with empty promises. At the heart of it all, social enterprises are income-generating operations for which metrics, indicators, and impact are very important. At the end of the day, we will know where we stand and what else we need to do to fill in the gaps.

Think about it: if we had a president who at the very least was as entrepreneurial, as passionate, as savvy, as creative, and as progressive as some of our country’s top (social) entrepreneurs, wouldn’t you feel a tad more hopeful about our future and more willing to help make things work?

Niña Terol, 28, is a writer, editor, communications consultant, and emerging social entrepreneur. She is also the Vice Chairperson for Internal Affairs of Team RP, a youth-led movement for truth, accountability, and reform in Philippine governance.

These days, the number in this statement is (potentially) as important as your credit card limit, your account balance, or your official designation. In a day and age when “virtual” friends are as important as the “live” ones you have coffee with once a week, creating the appropriate online persona and cultivating a fruitful online social network become imperative. Gone are the days when colleagues and clients have no clue about our lives outside work and about how we spend our weekends. These days, everyone knows what everyone else does, eats, wears, loves and hates.

This often puts me in interesting predicaments: My online buddies sometimes know more about my everyday life than my best friends (my “soul sisters,” who unfortunately have yet to be bitten by the social networking bug). My beloved — the subject of most of my rosy ramblings — meets acquaintances who are “fans” of my blog and who know details of our love life. Long-lost friends and high school classmates have become close connections not because of our after-work conversations but because of the virtual hugs, drinks, fortune cookies and notes we exchange online.

The upside is that, as a writer, I am given more avenues for creative expression and experimentation. I manage my numerous blogs as if they were magazines, with specific themes and formats. One is on the sweet details of life and romance. Another is about a girl’s exploration and journey toward authenticity. Still another is about “soul work” and about the tools that help us gain a deeper understanding of our inner selves. I have an online portfolio of published pieces. And yet another is a “best of” blog. Whatever doesn’t get published on paper gets posted online; it’s perfect for the work that I do and the kind of readership I want to develop.

But this does have its downside. Just as in real relationships, these social networks take time and effort to cultivate. If you’re serious about your online connections, you tend to spend more time in front of the PC doing “busywork” than you should. Instead of having coffee with friends or spending quality time with loved ones, you are kept busy “poking” someone on Facebook, posting photos and videos on Multiply or MySpace, or answering late-night surveys on Friendster. While it can be helpful if done moderately, it can be distracting (especially if your partner or the people closest to you are uninitiated).

Online social networking also comes with its own (self-imposed) restrictions. As a writer who makes a living on the thoughts and observations that make it to the printed page, I have no choice but to treat my online networks as an extension of my professional contacts. I have to be careful about everything I post on Multiply, Blogger, Facebook, Friendster, or i.ph, and I can’t (fortunately or unfortunately) blog about anything that will put my artistic or professional integrity in question. No griping about this or that client, no spilling the beans about a subject before the article comes out in print, no pre-empting any special events or launches that have yet to be announced, no ranting that will make me seem like a mess, and definitely no grammatically incorrect posts! The friends who make up my social networks are potential readers and clients; therefore, everything that I put out there has to be consistent with who I am and what my work stands for.

The online revolution has done much for the World, and online social networking has likewise helped to boost my career. In the past few years that I have been a member of online networking sites, I have reconnected with many classmates and long-lost friends, tapped many prospective clients, developed a following for my kind of writing and honed my craft in a way that I wasn’t able to do in the years before blogging. I have become more confident and more aware of my strengths, and I also have become more conscious of my social responsibility as a writer. Apparently, people find time to read what I write, so I had better make my posts worth reading!

In spite of all this, I feel that there’s a crucial element that I’m missing out on sometimes: personal, face-to-face conversations. I often find myself in front of the computer for far too long stretches that my social life suffers. Sure, my online contacts know what I’m going through and what I’m thinking, but my partner is wondering why my moods swing the way they do sometimes. (“It’s in my blog,” I tell him.) I take it for granted that not everyone is online, and that personal relationships are (still) far more valuable than online ones.

So even if I enjoy being an online “social butterfly,” don’t be surprised when there isn’t too much activity on my blogs. On those days, I am probably sipping a nice, warm cup of tea, enjoying great conversation with a good friend, in a place where hugs and drinks can be exchanged in person.

Niña Terol, 27, is a writer, editor, communications consultant, lifestyle reporter, and arts and culture enthusiast.

(To CC and Niño and their art; and to Jean Paul, his music, and the [red] pill.)

Before anything else, I’d like to apologize to Mr. Pascasio (Nikko, is that you?) for not responding to his question on goals and ethics in this Spoonful.

Something amazing happened to me this weekend that I just had to share with everyone.

I came face-to-face with signs that I had never thought I would find. Signs that I had often prayed for but forgotten about. Until now.

When I saw them and recognized them for what they were, I felt as if I had seen ghosts from my past. I was stunned, overwhelmed, and scared. I could hardly believe what I was seeing and feeling, but I had to believe that they were real.

Coincidences happen once. But a string of coincidences that are somehow related to the subject of my discernment must mean something.

I cannot relate the details of my experience, but I’d like to talk about recognizing the signs that exist around us.

They are everywhere.

In The Alchemist, the bestselling work by Brazilian author Paulo Coelho, a shepherd boy named Santiago leaves his Spanish hometown in search of a treasure. He encounters many interesting individuals—a gypsy, an old king, a crystal merchant, an Englishman, and finally, the Alchemist—all of whom teach him about understanding the Language of the World.

It is a language that can be understood by everyone who lives, including plants and animals. It needs no words, no foreign vocabulary and grammar, no special characters. Only a true understanding of our own Personal Legends—our reasons for being—and an openness of heart, mind, and soul.

Do you believe in signs? Some of you probably do, but many probably don’t.

We live in a very pragmatic and technical world that it seems foolish to talk about signs, much less look for them.

But think back to some of the decisions that you’ve had to make in your life. Did you decide entirely based on your clear-headed judgment, or did you get some help from a friend’s advice, a passage in a book, or a nagging feeling in your chest?

And how about some decisions that you didn’t make? Have you ever been at that point where you had to either move or stay, and you chose to stay not because you really wanted to, but because you were scared to move? Do you still get that nagging feeling in your chest that you should have done something?

I’ve felt that countless times in my young life. And with each time that I chose to ignore the signs, I felt that I was straying farther from my dream. The signs were leading me to a certain direction, but I stubbornly chose to go my own way. And I got hurt. Over and over again.

We do that fairly often, don’t we? We stay paralyzed and stuck to our little corner of the world because we’re scared of taking risks—especially personal ones. We’re scared of moving. We’re scared of changing. We’re scared of failing.

The weird thing is, we’re not scared of not succeeding.

And that’s probably the greatest tragedy of all. Paulo Coelho says, “To realize one’s destiny is a person’s only obligation.”

I’m not fatalistic, and I still believe that we make our choices. Nothing is pre-destined to the point where we’re no longer required to act on anything. But I believe that signs guide us to the right path, so that we can achieve our dreams sooner.

These signs are found within us, in the stillness of our hearts, in the deepest recesses of our being.

To actually see them, and recognize them for what they are, we have to clear ourselves of all doubts, fears, and worries. We’ve got to remove the trappings that stay stuck inside us. We’ve got to know who we really are and what we’re really meant to do. It’s a painful task, but it will be even more painful to go through life not knowing our life’s purpose, our life’s worth.

Listen to your heart. Just try.

(I’ve always been a mind-over-heart person, but the moment I listened to my heart everything just fell into place. “When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”)

Here’s another passage from The Alchemist:

“Well, then, why should I listen to my heart?”

“Because you will never again be able to keep it quiet. Even if you pretend not to have heard what it tells you, it will always be there inside you, repeating to you what you’re thinking about life and about the world.”

“You mean I should listen, even when it’s treasonous?”

“Treason is a blow that comes unexpectedly. If you know your heart well, it will never be able to do that to you. Because you’ll know its dreams and wishes, and will know how to deal with them.”

“You’ll never be able to escape from your heart. So it’s better to listen to what it has to say. That way, you’ll never have to fear an unanticipated blow.”

Good luck with your life’s pilgrimage. May the signs be with you.