Friday, August 18, 2006

when life gives you lemons


a repeat of the reason for my blogging. . .

a TV show not so long ago continues to inspire me. "the new heroes" aired in PBS last year featuring 14 people from around the world, the social enterpreneurs--that developed their businesses around solutions and resources to the very needy communities they were in.

albina ruiz found a way to address the inefficient garbage collection in peru. there was even a marketplace that had no garbage collection at all. unhealthy garbage festered. she gave the people in that community livelihood by empowering them to collect garbage more efficiently and environmentally safer than the government. now, the people prefer ruiz's services than peru's.

maria teresa leal founded a sewing coop for the very poor women in brazil to work from home and take care of their kids at the same time--recycling scraps of cloth into fashionable quilted fabric with knit and crochet accessories for designer fashion, now exported to europe.

muhammed yunus set up his grameen bank amidst the slums of bangladesh, providing micro-business with loans without collateral to the poorest women. grameen bank has been acknowledged as the single most important development in third world countries in 100 years.

i hope you can check out the site and meet the other 11 of my new heroes, not of wars or weapons, but of creative ideas and determination to change the world. maybe they will inspire you towards something greater, too! everyone has been made for some particular work and the desire for that work has been put into her heart. and aristotle said that "where your talents and the needs of the world cross, there lies your vocation."

my cousin, franco and his friends have founded ADVOCACY--a cause marketing agency that seeks to pursue CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) initiatives by linking companies with philippine NGOs. all the best to them!

so when life gives us garbage, we must segregate it. when life gives us cloth scraps, we should make a quilt.

how shall we change our world today?

click on the new heroes

5 comments:

kofranks said...

Great entry Minotte especially about micro-finance. My High school batch beneficiary is a micro-finance project for Gawad Kalinga's Blue Eagle Village in Payatas. My new business with Rapa of cause marketing and advocacy is also geared towards that. Gaya ng sabi ni Rapa: "It's doing well, by doing good!".

TOW Blog said...

wonderful!! let me know the developments of the blue eagle village. galing!!

sabi nga ni victor hugo, "you can resist an invading army but you simply cannot resist an idea whose tie has come."

best of luck ulit!

Señor Enrique said...

This is simply incredible, Minotte!

I have been exploring an idea of setting up a Web-based advocacy initiative to help fellow local Filipinos gain awareness of their rights and power as consumers.

I was involved with a couple of consumer-related problems, and after much soul-searching, I realized that perhaps, God gave me these dilemma in order to turn them into something good; to benefit others.

I will email you more about it.

Thanks for the valuable information. Heaven-sent talaga ito!

Cheers!

Eric

TOW Blog said...

go, eric, go!!

Señor Enrique said...

Haven't forgotten the email I mentioned; just waiting for final resolution of one major issue before I write to you about it.

Ganito ata talaga dito sa Pinas, they really use time against their foes :)