Starting the year with good news, good moves

I am starting the year on a high! I have been high on the magic of synchronicities and “accidental” surprises, with needs, situations and things coming to me when I least expect them and with a greater frequency. I think of a book I would like, someone gives it to me a couple of days after. I put a gentle reminder to buy myself some kitchen items, I am gifted by exactly what I thought of the next day. I keep in my thought that I need to pass the bookstore for something, and in the next hour, someone offers to me what I need. It’s getting to be a little unnerving, but I laugh it off as perfect harmony that the Universe allows me to dance in now.

One thing that has played out in my life in the second half of last year was the lesson that when the unexpected, unscripted occurs, we can know for certain that this is where we are meant to be and what we are meant to do. After a hectic Christmas season overseeing a four-month-old ECHOstore, we’re off to Amsterdam! But wait, that’s cutting the story short. Backtrack: We (meaning my business partners Chit, Reena and I) submitted an entry to the First Businessplan Competition of the Philippine BiD (Business In Development) Challenge, which provides coaching and investor matching for sustainable enterprises. On its third year, the Philippine BiD Challenge is done in partnership with Fair Ventures, a Dutch NGO and organized by the Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP). This international competition has produced such sustainable development products for poor communities in Bolivia, Ecuador, Jordan, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, Argentina, Peru and Columbia. The Philippines was the first in the world to host its own version of the BiD Challenge three years ago and has helped small or micro-entrepreneurs start businesses by helping them with business plans, coaching and even investor partnering.

And so we won all the prizes: besting 106 entries from the Philippines and emerging one of eight winners who each got P100,000 start-up capital to further expand the business. Then we also received a special prize of free one-year website hosting for an e-commerce website and payment gateway. And finally: ECHOstore was named Philippine Champion, alongside Rags2Riches (who, by the way, was our first partner organization and one of the first products we brought into ECHOstore). We are set to fly to chilly Amsterdam in the international BiD marketplace on Jan. 27, 2009. There, hopefully, international funding groups and agencies choose us as a viable concept so we can get more funds to help us expand and develop the ECHOstore sustainable lifestyle community, not only locally but abroad. So I am keeping my fingers and toes crossed because if we do win that, how many communities and groups will we be able to help and bring along with our success?

Then we “accidentally” (as how the Universe creates such happy accidents) started chatting with Aimee Gloria, a member of the Kabisig ng Kalahi Foundation. Aimee has also just walked into the store just to kill time and see how our new store looked like. In half an hour, we had all created a campaign we now call: Malunggay Green Kids: a feeding program of ECHOstore-Kabisig ng Kalahi to help address the new record-high of hunger in the country. Based on the latest survey by the private polling firm Social Weather Stations, an estimated 4.3 million households experienced involuntary hunger at least once in the past three months as hunger hit a new record-high at 23.7 percent. “The latest hunger record is 11 points above the 10-year average of 12.6 percent,” SWS said in a statement released during the end of the year.

Of course the hardest hit are children, and this is where the Kabisig ng Kalahi Foundation, established in 2001, works in full time partnership with DSWD, local government and private sector to give supplemental feeding for malnourished children six years old and below from the most impoverished communities in the country. This is the age that is most critical for the development of the child’s brain. The Supplemental Feeding (SF) Program addresses the immediate nutritional and health needs of malnourished children through a daily hot meal and milk, supported by medical check-up, de-worming, and primary complex treatment. To date, 15 million malnourished children in approximately 500 feeding centers in impoverished barangays covering all regions nationwide have since benefited from the program. Eighty to 90 percent of the beneficiaries have recorded marked improvement in weight and health status.

At ECHOstore, malunggay products (capsules, powdered food supplement, soaps and body care products) in their various forms are fast becoming favorite items being quickly taken off the shelves. Moringa is the scientific name for the humble malunggay. Interestingly enough, a study was made that the regions of the world where malunggay is plentiful are also the poorest countries with high rates of malnutrition. So part of the answer to malnutrition is actually right under our feet!

Of the 13 malunggay species, Moringa oleifera is the most nutritious one. Studies compare its nutritional value gram per gram: malunggay has 4x the vitamin A of carrots, 7x the vitamin C of oranges, 3x the potassium of bananas just to name a few. This is especially good as a lactating agent for breastfeeding mothers. Now, the powder is being mixed in baby’s first food like cereal and lugaw.

ECHOstore’s campaign will involve the feeding of 30 children from an impoverished community in Taguig (so we can monitor the children as they would be close to the store). ECHOstore will also be helping out in the development of livelihood programs for some of the mothers of these children. A portion of the sales of malunggay-related products that are sold at ECHOstore will be given to the feeding program. Then we sat with Mylene Santana, the moving force behind the Moringana brand who willingly also said she would donate malunggay first food powder to the feeding program. How wonderful can such partnerships be? A foundation, a store, a brand, a government agency and local government will all come together to work to help feed malnourished children.

We begin with one community. Then if more consumers buy malunggay products (as it is good for health anyway), more communities can be reached and more children helped. What an exciting way to start and move the year forward!

(ECHOstore and the Kabisig ng Kalahi Foundation are also accepting donations for the Malunggay Green Kids feeding program. E-mail jej.echolifestyle.store@gmail.com)