Enterprising students

Last year, four students from the University of Cebu - Banilad, Jezreel Ezer Archival, Lloyd Stephen Orlanes, Sheryl Benitez and Jean Millor, made it to the “I am a Changemaker” -- a business plan competition sponsored by the British Council. Today, the same student-entrepreneurs are going to make their business plan come to life after getting the nod from companies that are interested to buy their “mango oil.” In their business plan, the oil can be extracted from the skin and kernel of mangoes after separating flesh. And the idea is to make use of, or to process the skin and seeds of discarded mangoes.

Cebu being the dried mango capital of the Philippines, processors and manufacturers of dried mangoes will soon be able to rid themselves of the huge task of disposing their fruit wastes by giving them out to oil extractors, in this case, to these enterprising students. Obtaining oil from mangoes is a simple process that can be taught and learned and could be made as a lucrative livelihood for the marginalized sector. Initially, the first to get their hands to learn the process are the women from Barangay Umapad in Mandaue City – the primary beneficiaries of their envisioned business.

Oil derived from mangoes is rich in vitamins and minerals and can be used commercially in cosmetic and wellness products. Thus, there is a huge market for this fruit extract not only in the Philippines but also abroad. My wish is that these young people will make their first million in the next three to five years and may they continue to serve as inspiration to the young minds that starting a business is not only the domain of the old and the established.

A good business always starts with an idea. My other wish is that the Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry would come out with a similar competition to encourage business students to draft innovative and doable business plans.

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Talking about young people, we recently contracted the services of iDesign, a Cebu-based web solutions company to develop a web application for us. Since we have with us a technical manager to lead the programming, we wanted that the development be done in our office. iDesign then deployed two of its programmers to do the job and to our surprise, we were given two fresh graduates from Palawan State University.

I thought we deserved seasoned programmers due to the scope and complexity of the application. But I was humbled. The “kids” they assigned really know their stuff. And shame on me for being bias towards Cebuano IT developers! What make these young programmers tick is that they have a knack for solving difficult problems as if they are a part of their mental diet. In appreciation to these two, I would like to mention their names here: Carlo Juan Mendoza and Jerick Givera, hats off to you… dudes!

While we reckon Cebu’s talented pool of IT professionals, I can say that it is now pretty much a talent in this country. And apart from the fact that we have young and motivated IT professionals, they are also multi-skilled and highly adaptive in using new tools. For example, developing mobile applications used to be the turf of a few. But now, programmers can easily write applications for Android and Windows-based phones. I would like to attribute this phenomenon with the quality of IT schools we now have – more updated and responsive to the needs of the industry.

I am hoping though that our colleges and universities will take a step further; transcending the mindset of providing knowledge and skills to our young people. We need to mentor our students to becoming entrepreneurs than just employees so they don’t need to leave the country and contribute to the mass exodus of skilled professionals.

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