Higher choices and directions

I am constantly amazed at how many people around today are all working for some higher purpose. I have two stories. One such person came to me a year ago mentioning over a conversation that he wanted to help. I didn’t put too much attention on that offer. But a year later, he came back and mentioned this again… that he wanted to help ECHOstore. And he offered to give money every month to anything that would directly help communities. “What’s the catch?” I asked him. “Nothing,” he replied. He added that a monthly amount would be given as way of his donation as long as we purchased something we could sell at ECHOstore, directly from communities.

This started our first (and I know this will not be the last) Angel Funder. Now, there are such things as Angel Funder who are investors. They go around looking for good projects that they could invest small capital in. Often, the small entrepreneurs would have to present a whole business plan to prove that there would be clear returns in profit over time. Well, ECHOstore’s Angel Funder is even better. The only thing he and his group asked is that purchasing of goods should be directly from poor communities. And of course this was right down our alley as most of the products in ECHOstore come directly from small community groups. “Angel R”, (that’s my code name for him), and his family had made it quite big and successful in the microfinancing business. “Angel R” still holds his dream to leave everything behind and just go off to meditate and farm. But his microfinance business seemed to fly better with him around so he continued working for a while as blessings continued to pour in. These angels are simple people, and their joy is to be able to give back. They had tried to give back a couple of times to other communities and charities who needed help, but the pattern they saw was that the money they were giving wasn’t helping transform lives. It wasn’t sustainable to just give and give. I remember when he even tried to help poor urban folks develop a livelihood of making sandals from old rubber tires. Now that wasn’t sustainable, too, as their main business was microfinancing and they suddenly found themselves in skills and livelihood development, not to mention community organizing then meant having to market and sell the sandals! Thus, he offered the donation to me again. He said they would rather just do what they are good at (microfinancing) and give money to ECHOstore to help us and community groups be sustainable. So the ECHOtrio happily received the many post-dated checks. Not only were we surprised, we were elated! 

Now, we had extra cash to be able to purchase fast-moving items from community folks who needed to be paid right away. But “Angel R” and his group surprised us even further. They said they wanted to give us additional seed money to start a social enterprise that would make some profit so that that profit can once more be plowed back to the Angel Fund. How wonderful can this be! So we in the ECHOtrio are excitedly trying to brainstorm and plan for a specific line of fair trade products, which we can have our communities produce and we would sell — our “Angel Line!” “Angel R” told us that they decided to make their donations more sustainable by just staying with groups who can sustain and continue to help other people. Aside from the generous philanthropic spirit that they have, what is important is that they care to see their money’s positive effect in helping better lives of people by creating more livelihood.

So, as this is a new way of a “donation” for help, we gladly accept more such good-hearted angels out there who are too busy, have extra money and really just want to help poverty alleviation. In the whole cycle of giving and sharing, truly, all of us play a vital part. I believe this is the unique niche of ECHOstore. Not only do we purchase and sell fair trade community products, but that we also go out of our way by volunteering to develop products, help in packaging and design to add value to the products for higher upscale markets. Because of this, we were invited to be one of the exhibitors in the coming People Power Markets exhibition to be held at the NBC Tent at Fort Bonifacio Global City as part of the 25th anniversary of the People Power event on Feb. 22-23. (The general public is invited to see the exhibit).

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My other story is about a Frenchman who fell in love with the Philippines and made it his home for him and his family in the early 1980s. Hubert d’Aboville fell specifically in love with the culture of seven indigenous Mangyan tribes who live near the foot of Mount Malasimbo near Puerto Galera in Oriental Mindoro. So devoted is he to the place that in the 1990s, he went on a personal crusade to get Puerto Galera a membership into the exclusive international club of the Most Beautiful Bays in the World. This club, which started in Berlin in 1997, was a movement to protect the environment and the development and enhancement of marine resource worldwide.

This month, he embarked upon an ambitious eco-tourism project after more than a decade of continuously developing a sprawling property. He brought in last Friday and yesterday international musicians (from Japan, Australia, Korea, UK and Croatia) and guests, as well as local artists to visit the place and enjoy the Full Moon Malasimbo Arts and Music Festival (www.malasimbofestival.com). This big production was meant to benefit the tribal communities in their traditional Mangyan villages, as well as the various other resort hotels in Puerto Galera.

Hubert, his family and committed friends have had the thankless task of doing everything with such a limited budget... including stepping in to develop infrastructure and roads in the area when local government promises were never met. The objective is to make this a yearly festival, centered on the Mangyan’s art and life and the beauty of the place, so the tribes would be able to build a more sustainable livelihood. Part of the ticket sales would go to planting of hundreds of trees in the forest area.

Why does he do this when he could easily be resting and just focusing on his own stressful job and duties in Manila? “I love the people, I love the place and I know by doing (challenging as it is because it’s the first time this is being done) I can help promote this beautiful country,” he tells me. Now, how much higher a reason can a Frenchman give for what drives him to action? I see a Filipino heart that beats stronger inside him than so many other Filipino people I know.