PBSP
traces its roots in the early 1970’s, during
a period of national and economic unrest. Fifty
Filipino businessmen saw an opportunity to share
their experience, technologies and expertise towards
making a difference in the lives of the poor.
They pledged to set aside 1% of their companies’
net income before taxes to pursue poverty alleviating
programs and to fund a foundation. Its purpose:
to pool the resources of the business community
into a program of organized, professional and
sustained assistance.
It started out as a vision: a dynamic business
community, responsive and committed to the task
of helping the poor. Today, it is the nation’s
largest and only corporate-led social development
foundation, perhaps the only one of its kind in
Asia and the world.
Early
PBSP efforts were relatively simple and short-term.
The Foundation tried out projects that could promptly
create improved living conditions and at the same
time, become ready models for replication to other
areas. It soon realized that the task of addressing
poverty, of “helping people to help themselves”,
was not a simple process. Gradually, PBSP empowered
communities to plan implement and manage successful
and sustainable development projects. In the process,
the Foundation was able to put in place its own
unique developmental approach: the application
of business management skills and hardheaded business
sense in social development.
During
this time, PBSP saw growing among beneficiaries
the first stirrings of an increased awareness
of their potential as individuals, and of recognition
of newly acquired strength as united communities.
Spurred by the realization that its unique approach
was proving to be sound, the Foundation expanded
its reach by replicating successful pilot projects
in more communities, at the same time linking
these individual projects more closely. One of
the more significant programs PBSP implemented
during the period was the Cooperative Small Economic
Program, which tried to build up cooperatives
to become “little PBSPs”. The program
made it possible for participating cooperatives
to help community residents in their income-generating
activities.
About
this time, the Foundation began to put together
the design of an integrated area strategy to sharpen
the focus of its development assistance, and create
more impact. From multiple small projects, it
concentrated on four main activities: community
organizing, livelihood and social credit, basic
social services and appropriate technology. From
a few but big barangays, development assistance
was designed to impact on the entire province.
From a nondescript group of beneficiaries, only
five specific poverty groups were identified as
intended beneficiaries: landless rural workers,
sustenance fisher folk, marginal upland farmers,
urban poor and indigenous cultural communities.
PBSP
strived further to organize its work for even
greater efficiency. PBSP consolidated its efforts
to 15 provinces where at least 40% of the families
live below the poverty line, where PBSP had done
some work in the past, and where there were partner
organizations capable of implementing the program.
This province-based and poverty group-focused
approach was not easy but it afforded PBSP and
individual member companies in the identified
provinces a chance to make a real and actual difference
in poor people’s lives.
Close
to the end of 1990, PBSP realized that working
on the scale of entire provinces was too broad
and enormous a task even for the Foundation to
handle. The program demanded more funds than were
available and partner organizations did not prove
to be strong and numerous enough. Driven by the
desire to effect a positive and sustained impact,
PBSP redefined the scope of its strategy to work
on the scale of provinces but on the scale of
impact areas – areas within a province bordered
by natural and resource boundaries. From 1991
to 1995, the Area Resource Management (ARM) Program
was implemented – the first PBSP program
that set environmental conservation as a goal
and success indicator.
As
the country geared up for the new millennium,
PBSP saw itself faced with issues of rapid industrialization
and urbanization in some of the country’s
former agricultural areas (now called high growth
areas). PBSP felt the need to respond by focusing
its assistance on the poverty groups affected
by the shift. The ARM program
was expanded to include selected high growth areas
where the national government, business and other
sectors were focusing their investment priorities.
The High Growth ARM adds a new facet to PBSP’s
core strategy – developing the workforce.
The
7th 5-Year Plan recognizes the maturing of the
corporate citizen and makes sure that the Foundation’s
poverty responses reflect its member companies’
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). All the
programs are to involve our member-companies at
all stages of implementation and review. The Foundation
is also set to assist members to look at their
CSR practices and gauge their effectiveness. The
five-year plan is the 21st century corporate citizen’s
response to the challenge of Poverty
Alleviation, use of Information
Technology in Poverty Alleviation, Promotion
of Corporate
Citizenship, and the greater visibility of
PBSP’s Leadership
in Corporate Social Responsibility.
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1971-1975:
Building Models in Short-Term Projects
