NEW WAYS OF DOING, GIVING
Our 252 members, including 19 new ones that joined us during the year, enabled us to meet and even exceeded many of our program targets, bankrolled by the total PhP2.15 billion in funds in fiscal year 2011, a huge jump from PhP962.43 million in 2010.
The fund surge can be attributed primarily to the jump in total restricted funds from PhP902.59 million in 2010 to PhP2.08 billion this year, largely due to grants and other contributions, which more than doubled in 2011 to PhP2.016 billion from PhP846.169 million in 2010. Member companies’ restricted funds, or funds that can only be used for specific programs, meanwhile, increased by 14 per cent to PhP64.42 million from PhP56.42 the prior year.
Total unrestricted revenues, on the other hand, increased by 25 per cent to PhP75.03 million from PhP59.835 million the year before, an encouraging sign that despite lingering economic concerns on the local and global fronts, the commitment to invest in social development programs remains steadfast.
Unrestricted membership contributions increased by 21 per cent to PhP39.10 million at the end of the 2011 fiscal year while investment income increased by 31 per cent to PhP35.93 million. These were used to fund part of operating expenses and as counterpart funds for major donor-funded projects.
The level of total unrestricted funds ̶ or funds that were invested in programs as determined by PBSP ̶ was the highest in five years, indicating even greater membership confidence in PBSP’s long-running programs implemented nationwide that fall under the general themes of basic education, health, environment, and sustainable livelihood and enterprise development.
We achieved the lowest leverage ratio, or the proportion of total unrestricted funds to total restricted funds, in the last five years of only four per cent.
PROGRAM RESULTS
Our sector-focused programs aim to contribute to the reduction of poverty in the country and the attainment of environmental sustainability. These programs are aligned with the National Priority Agenda and the Millennium Development Goals.
Basic Education
The goal of our program in education is to increase the ranks of educated Filipinos who will one day be responsible for charting the course of Philippine society. They are tomorrow’s consumers, employees, managers, and policymakers who will directly impact on the long-term performance of Philippine corporations.
The wisdom of adopting the strategy of collective giving, where funds are pooled then invested in specific projects with great potential for improvement, can be gleaned from the encouraging results of member companies’ interventions in basic education in fiscal year 2011.
The bulk of the basic education projects were implemented in Mindanao, which continues to lag behind in almost all education indicators such as enrolment and academic achievement.
The projects that were financed by member companies as well as other like-minded partners benefited 465 public elementary and secondary schools and the results show that 65 per cent of these assisted schools achieved by as much as 353 per cent increase in enrollment; 93 per cent practically had no more dropouts and 56 per cent indicated a significant improvement in academic performance, with the mean percentage scores in the national achievement test increasing by between 3 and 38 percentage points.
The results far exceeded the targets of just 5 per cent increase in enrollment, 50 per cent decrease in the dropout rate, and a 3-percentage-point increase in the mean percentage scores in the National Achievement Test. This indicates that the interventions are working.
To help meet the chronic shortage in basic education facilities, we built 109 new classrooms and repaired or renovated another 203. Over 160 learning resource centers were established and 5,300 new school desks were provided. More than 22,000 students benefited from scholarships and educational assistance. Some 3,039 teachers and 757 school heads were provided additional training to improve their teaching and management skills.
Health
PBSP’s unique ability to use corporate skills and attributes– transparency, efficiency, accountability and adherence to standards among them– has earned us the trust and confidence of funding agencies here and abroad.
One of the biggest testaments to PBSP’s abilities to give the most bang for corporate buck is its being tapped to implement tuberculosis projects funded by the Global Fund for HIV-AIDS, TB and Malaria, and the United States Agency for International Development. These projects implemented all over the country have contributed in a big way to the government’s aim to finally eradicate tuberculosis, which affects the disadvantaged sectors.
The projects, which complement each other, provide for the installation of laboratories, improvement of health centers, and training and mobilization of key members of the community to detect cases of TB. This is in response to findings that many cases are left untreated because the disease is not caught and managed early enough.
Last year, the tuberculosis projects funded by The Global Fund for TB Phase 1 and TB LINC Year 5 achieved the following results through assisted partners: 6,144 public and private health providers were trained on DOTS, exceeding the target for the year of 5,705; 89,198 regular TB cases and 497 multidrug-resistant (MDR) TB cases were detected.
In the area of maternal and child health, PBSP interventions in Mindanao to improve access of women and children to these vital services yielded positive results.
Monitoring data indicate that 53 per cent of pregnant women in assisted municipalities sought the minimum number of prenatal check-ups compared to only 43 per cent in non-assisted municipalities for a 10 percentage-point difference. The incidence of home-based deliveries was 10 percentage points lower in assisted municipalities compared to non-assisted municipalities at 43 per cent and 53 per cent, respectively.
PBSP attributes these outcomes to investments in the training of 374 barangay health workers, installation of needed equipment in nine rural health units that provide maternal and childcare services in the communities, and the construction/renovation of additional birthing clinics to bring healthcare closer to the communities.
Environment
Chilling evidence of the consequences of environmental degradation and climate change are all around in the form of stronger and more frequent natural disasters and changing weather patterns, among others.
The economic and social impact of these disasters has only emphasized the urgent need to invest in environmental programs. PBSP has long been doing its share in the campaign to halt and reverse environmental degradation, believing that it is simply the right thing to do in the face of such staggering losses.
Thus in 2011, we reforested 604 hectares of critical watersheds and 25 hectares of mangrove areas as our contribution to protect the environment and mitigate risks of disasters and climate change. The achievement exceeded the targets set for 2011 as member companies exerted extra efforts to help Mother Nature. Further, the upland and coastal reforestation initiatives were achieved with the help of more than 5,000 employee volunteers who reached our sites in the Central Cebu Protected Landscape, Marikina Watershed, and Olango Island in Cebu.
Also, we facilitated in 2011 the training of 10 municipal disaster coordinating councils and 50 barangay disaster coordinating councils to build the capacity of local communities to respond to and prepare for disasters.
With grant from World Bank Development Marketplace, we were likewise able to install a province-wide short messaging system in Southern Leyte that improved the capacity of the Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management office to monitor impending disasters and provide early warning to the barangays and municipalities. The SMS system is the first in the country and because of it, no casualty was recorded when typhoons Ramon and Sendong hit the area. At the same time, some 50 barangays were assisted in crafting multi-hazard contingency plans to anticipate effects brought about by climate change.
PBSP was also instrumental in the reconstitution of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Management Councils (FARMCs) in LGUs with critical coastal areas due to overfishing, destructive fishing, ruinous tourism practices, and oil spills.
As a result, FARMCs in 18 municipalities and 171 barangays covering five island-provinces in the Visayas were able to develop their coastal resource management plans, coordinate activities for mangrove reforestation and coastal clean-ups and update local fishery laws. We were able to do this with support from the Delegation of the European Commission in the Philippines.
Sustainable Livelihood and Enterprise Development
PBSP was founded on the core belief that it is not enough to just extend one-time funds to help the less privileged. Not only is pure philanthropic work unsustainable; it also does not make significant headway into solving society’s challenges such as poverty.
Thus long before corporate social responsibility became the buzzword among corporations that it is today, PBSP had already been implementing projects geared toward helping marginalized communities help themselves through sustainable livelihood and enterprise development projects.
These projects also provide member companies the opportunity to share not just their funds but also their expertise to help others get on the road toward earning more for themselves and their families and community.
In 2011, through its livelihood activities and micro, small and medium scale enterprises, PBSP was able to generate 9,207 new jobs. It also provided various business development services to 81 MSMEs, 36 of which have already recorded improvements in business operations such as increased sales, profits, and assets.
Our credit program disbursed PhP142 million for livelihood and enterprise financing, benefiting 6,199 MSMEs. To allow beneficiaries to participate in the local economy, we organized and trained 10,366 households in 180 communities spread across 57 municipalities nationwide.
We made significant progress in our attempt to employ the value chain approach in supporting community-based, rural enterprises through our Strategic Corporate-Community Partnership and Business Advisory Program. Through our business development services to address specific business issues and facilitating access to market, including member companies, assisted enterprises have demonstrated improvements in their business performance.
Also in the last fiscal year, BiD Challenge Philippines was able to showcase 28 innovative business plans from all over the country. And again, the Philippines won the grand prize in the international competition for the Women in Business Challenge held in Amsterdam.
Building relationships among entrepreneurs and investors has been crucial to BiD Challenge Philippines’ achievements in business matching. A total of PhP20 million worth of investments– in the form of loans, grant and equity– was secured from various investment partners to benefit six growing enterprises.
LESSONS LEARNED
Like other social development organizations that have to deal with daunting challenges,we had our share of hits and misses in the past fiscal year.
Across the length and breadth of our operations, we achieved many small victories that served to push our nationwide development agenda a few steps forward. But at the same time, some of our resolute efforts did fall short of our ambitious targets.
For those projects that either met or surpassed expectations, one of the major success factors was the efficient leveraging of a business solution to a complex social problem.
One example is in the area of Sustainable Livelihood and Enterprise Development, where the incorporation of business advisory services in the livelihood programs for assisted communities created a higher rate of success. Another proof is the Visayas experience where the direct link of communities with established markets ensured better and more sustainable income opportunities.
Using the knowledge developed in the business community of what the market needs and how to access that market enabled the assisted communities in project areas to find ready and willing buyers for their products and services, thus helping increase their income.
Rather than creating new products with uncertain or volatile markets, PBSP was able to point different communities in the right direction when it comes to product development. Some of the communities were even able to customize their products to specific needs of the member companies.
The increased awareness on the value chain and how to locate the assisted communities in the loop that connects buyers to producers has indeed made an immediate impact on the beneficiaries since their efforts to produce goods and services did not go to waste.
Another defining characteristic of projects that met set goals is that they enjoyed the strong support of PBSP member companies themselves, whether the projects were funded by them directly or implemented by us with funds from other donors and agencies or pooled together from membership dues.
The Northern Luzon office, for instance, attests that because a number of PBSP member companies were active in the implementation and development of projects, whether through volunteering or provision of technical services related to their core business operations ̶ these were implemented more effectively.
This development is expected to encourage other member companies to also find their niche in the huge world of social development, so that their corporate social responsibility projects can be implemented in a sustainable manner. This means that the companies can be relied on for support for a number of years considering the long-term nature of most social development projects.
PBSP continues to promote the powerful idea that by getting companies to integrate CSR in their core business, social development work would continue even in the face of internal and external challenges, such as the global economic crisis, because it is already as much an integral part of their operations as finance, corporate planning or manufacturing.
The value of getting other stakeholders such as the beneficiary communities themselves, local government units, national agencies and civil society organizations to buy into a project likewise cannot be underestimated.
Given the seriousness and complexity of social issues confronting the Philippines, one organization such as the PBSP cannot make a significant impact on its own, even if it already has significant resources, expertise and years of experience in development work.
The PBSP regional offices share that in the area of education, schools that received multiple types of assistance exhibited better academic performance compared to those that benefited from just one or a handful of assistance programs.
Multistakeholder participation such as the Parent-Teacher Associations (PTAs) allowed complementation and orchestration of various assistance programs to generate the desired outcomes and sustain project gains.
This is similar to how PBSP pools funds from its member-organizations and uses these to implement strategic projects that individual organizations would not be able to undertake on their own. PBSP leverages on the power of the strategic many, becoming a backbone organization through which socially aware companies can implement projects designed to help underprivileged Filipinos help themselves.
WAY FORWARD
One does not have to look far for proof that while PBSP has been involved in development work for over 40 years, much still needs to be done in the critical key areas of basic education, health, environment, and sustainable livelihood and enterprise development.
That PBSP has been able to create an impact since it was founded in 1970 cannot be disputed. But for it to continue to make an even more profound difference, it will have to build on project gains and continue to involve its members ̶ and the whole business community ̶ in the development and implementation of programs.
This will require the deployment of manpower and financial resources to find out from the ground what exactly are the types of projects that the members and other donors feel are relevant to their own mandates.
By doing so, member companies as well as donors would be better able to relate to the projects and commit their time and resources. Thus, PBSP will remain at the forefront of corporate involvement in social development and an influential voice to encourage other companies to tap its experience and expertise and put their resources in areas where they are needed most.
At the same time, PBSP should be going forward to implement already successful projects on a bigger scale. Big problems require big solutions, and this means getting more individuals and organizations behind a cause to push it forward despite the roadblocks along the way. It will have to continue, above all, to revolutionize business processes, in order to scale up development efforts.
Published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer and Business World, 24 January 2012; The Philippine Star, 31 January 2012