Globe Telecom
It takes people working together for the good of many to make the world a better place to live.
Picture a soap-making seminar being conducted in Cebu . Members of several barangays from the southern part of the island are listening intently as a speaker talks about how to make soap. Soap would help improve people's lives, but more than just the desire for a better livelihood, there is the goal of making their communities more attractive for tourists. In this way, the whole of Southern Cebu would benefit.
“Bridgecom sa Bayan is a project of Globe Telecom that allows us to reach out to the communities where we operate,” says Jones Campos, Globe's head of public relations. “We hope that we can help improve the entrepreneurial skills of the people in the smaller communities in Southern Cebu .”
Bridging Communities (or BridgeCom) is Globe's integrated corporate community relations program aimed at serving communities where it operates. Globe hopes to be identified as a development partner of the communities where it operates.
Globe, ABS-CBN Bayan Foundation and Turismo Rural Foundation, a Cebu-based tourism foundation, are working together to make Southern Cebu one of the must-visit places in the country.
Jeffrey Tarayao, Globe's community-relations head, says that its enterprise development program, Bridgecom sa Bayan, seeks to provide entrepreneurial skills for specific livelihoods in various barangays.
“But what we are trying to do is to make the entrepreneurial training barangay -specific”, says Tarayao. “We don't want to have generic programs for barangays . What we hope to do is to give them entrepreneurial skills which are specific to their needs per barangay .”
Brigdecom sa Bayan is a three-part program. Globe and ABS-CBN Foundation start by identifying which communities need assistance. Once that is done, they visit the communities and meet with community leaders. Together, they pinpoint what would be best for the community.
“This way, the community will own the project and be committed to its success,“ explains Tarayao. Once the community identifies which livelihood project is feasible, Bridgecom sa Bayan and ABS-CBN start the process of developing an entrepreneurial program best suited to the community.
The project hopes that when the communities become aware of what they can do to improve their lives, this will create a domino effect, helping other nearby communities as well.
The micro-financing component is handled by ABS-CBN Foundation. Meanwhile, Globe helps in bringing the community together and in tapping facilitators and speakers for the program.
It is also important that the project can be sustained. In Cebu, Globe has tapped the Turismo Rural Foundation, which is committed to making Cebu the next “place to be” in the Philippines . “We will set up small tourist shops where we can sell the products the local communities produce,” says Julie Vergara of Turismo Rural.
Globe hopes that this model in Southern Cebu will be replicated in communities in other parts of the country that need help in developing entrepreneurial skills. After all, it is for the local communities that Bridgecom sa Bayan was created. The seminars encourage local communities to be self-sustaining, and in this way, help the country move forward.
In 2006, Bridgecom sa Bayan reached more that 2,500 barangay leaders and micro- entrepreneurs and over 600 barangays in the country.
Says Tarayao: “What is important here is that even if the communities do not know each other at the start, in the process, they are willing to help each other grow as a community, regardless of what their individual agendas might have been when they joined the program.”
Source: “Building bridges, creating communities” by Kathy Moran, Philippine Star, 7/30/06
