In partnership with 

   

The Social Entrepreneur of the Year 2007

PHILIPPINES

Maria A.  VILLALBA

Unlad Kabayan Migrant Services Foundation

Innovation and Strategy

Unlad Kabayan is a not-for-profit organization that links the savings of migrant workers to community development. Unlad Kabayan pioneered and promoted the MSAI-CDR (migrant savings and alternative investment for community development and reintegration) program in the Philippines and provides a chain of services to migrant workers by working through overseas migrant centers. 

 

The first service offering includes financial literacy education as well as savings and insurance packages that are specifically negotiated with Filipino banks (e.g. LBC and Planters) to meet the needs of the migrant workers.  Unlad Kabayan then helps these migrant workers form savings groups which become pools of funds for investing into various forms of small businesses in their respective hometowns.  More importantly, Unlad Kabayan has been successful at channeling these savings pools towards enterprise and community development efforts in poverty-stricken regions around the Philippines.

 

Aside from connecting the funds to the regions, Unlad Kabayan operates the Social Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development Services (SEEDS) and Business Incubation (BI) programs which provides business management and social responsibility courses and serves as a resource center for fledgling entrepreneurs to start their respective enterprises.  Beyond educating the beneficiaries, creating the space for them to participate in people-centered development will pave the way for them to become active agents in social change.

 

One such example of this model’s success is a coconut fiber processing plant in San Isidro, Davao Oriental.  The processing plant provides direct employment, while improving the profitability of coconut farmers and workers in the area.  The plant itself is profitable and provides a good return to the overseas Filipino workers who have invested in it.

 

From the beginning in 1996, Unlad Kabayan received most of its funds from overseas donor agencies.  This has gradually changed to include funds from the Filipino government, partner institutions and from the migrant workers themselves.  As the SEEDS and BI programs become more mature, future sources of funding will increasingly be derived from services rendered to the startup businesses, as well as potentially from profitable equity stakes in those enterprises.

 

 

Background Situation

More than eight million Filipinos, about one tenth of the country’s population, are working overseas. The country ranks as the third biggest exporter of workers, whose income now plays a central role in the country’s economy.

A recent Asian Development Bank report put the real figure in the $15 to $21 billion range – dwarfing the $2 billion the country received in 2006 in foreign direct investment.

Attracted by higher wages, the exodus is fast draining the Philippines of its skilled professional workforce such as teachers and nurses. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), nurses and other medical workers are leaving the country at the rate of at least 15,000 a year, threatening the country’s health infrastructure. Jean Marc Olive of WHO warned that the exodus was expected to persist until at least 2015, with annual demand for medical workers in the United States and Europe estimated to be about 800,000.

Apart from the traditional jobs of domestic work, entertainment, construction and merchant marine, new jobs for pilots and engineers overseas are increasing. The US is the world’s biggest employer with 2.7 million Filipinos as of December 2004, followed by Saudi Arabia.

Not only are overseas Filipino workers' families dependent on remittances, but the economy itself is kept afloat by their remittances and not by a strong local economic capacity. The decline in domestic investment implies a diminishing capacity to expand production and even a slowdown in the future. The glaring lack of decent jobs in the country is the main factor for the exodus of Filipinos seeking employment overseas. The sheer scarcity of jobs is already a sign that all is not well and that the economy lacks an internal dynamism that is able to productively harness and employ the Filipino workforce.

Source: UnladKabayan.org website

 

The Entrepreneur

Maria Angela Villalba grew up in Butuan City and attended University of the Philippines-Diliman and majored in social work because of her personal and academic interests in poverty.  After college, she worked as a teacher and with the government, but later decided that she would be best able to directly help others through work with non-governmental organizations.

 

After living in Hong Kong for 10 years and through travelling to various parts of the world, Maria was struck by how the Philippines was not able to develop like other countries post-independence.  The sight of the numerous Filipino migrant workers in all these countries was also heart-wrenching for her.  While overseas, her colleagues in International NGOs met with compatriots who were academics or technical experts yet most of the time Maria would be meeting Filipinos who worked in kitchens, and were either doormen or entertainers.  The sense that Filipinos ended up becoming the cleaners and entertainers of the world drove her down the path of starting Unlad Kabayan.  Her long-term goal is for Filipinos to find decent jobs in their own country and that they will seek employment overseas as a matter of choice and not for lack of feasible options at home.

 

Maria’s work has garnered Unlad Kabayan and its network respect and support from the government, the private sector, international organizations and donor agencies, and most importantly, in the communities where her efforts make the most difference.  Maria is a board member for the Global Fund for Women in San Francisco.  She also founded the Migrant Forum in Asia and is a founding member of Migrant Rights International in Geneva.