Bagoong brings the sweet smell of success

MANILA, Philippines — In the Philippines, it’s become a tradition for us in Citi to celebrate International Women’s Day (IWD) not only with female colleagues but also with community partners.  In the last four years, we’ve had the opportunity to reach out to abused young girls, teach children to read as well as tutor them in Math, and coach micro business owners.

Last March 6, there were 12 of us who trekked to San Jose del Monte in Bulacan to visit Teresita Valdez, the national winner of the 12th Citi Microentrepreneurship Awards.  Driving nearly two hours to get there, it was lovely to be welcomed by Teresita, whom her workers all fondly call Nanay Tess (Mommy Tess), wearing purple, the universal color of IWD.

I was joined by Bea Tan, our consumer business manager and my co-chair in the Citi Women’s Network, in hosting an intimate discussion with Nanay Tess where she generously shared her life story. At age 13, she quit school to help her struggling parents, thinking then that as a girl, her brothers are the ones that should continue their education.

Because she was quite tall, her employer assumed she was of age, and put her to work removing fish heads to make sautéed shrimp paste or bagoong, a popular delicacy in every Filipino home.

With her initiative and resourcefulness, she was “promoted” to prepare the sauces. At age 16, she perfected a recipe to extend product shelf life. Later, she set up her own business making bagoong and anchovy sauces with her in-laws. Her competitive edge was not using preservatives, other than vinegar, to prolong the shelf life of her product.

While it would seem that she met one success after the other, what makes Nanay Tess’ story truly inspiring is that each of those successes came at a personal cost.  In choosing to withhold her recipe from the factory supervisor whom she suspected planned to leave and set up a company to rival her employer’s, she endured a range of menial, even humiliating tasks, such as cleaning up clogged canals using her bare hands.  To exit a business partnership with her in- laws that was enriching only them while using her skills and receiving only a modest salary, Nanay Tess and her husband faced many years of alienation.  And in 2007, finally running a business all her own, her top customer could not pay over P2 million in debt. Crippled financially, Nanay Tess and her husband were forced to sell their home.

Microfinance saved her, when she was able to borrow P10,000 to start anew.  Today, her venture regularly employs 22, and her two sons and daughter are also involved.  When they have bulk orders, she contracts as many as 40 additional employees in her community to meet the demand.

Citi Microentrepreneurship Awards

Nanay Tess is grateful for winning in the Citi Microentrepreneurship Awards (CMA), which presented her both cash and non-cash prizes to improve her business and accelerate her enterprise’s progress. The non-cash incentives include a two-week course on Grassroots Entrepreneurship and Management that covers courses on marketing, operations, human resources, and finance, which she recently completed. She is looking forward to signing up for mentoring and coaching sessions with subject matter experts, including Citi senior officers that serve as volunteers in the Citi Microenterprise Development Center.  She also appreciated the microinsurance coverage awarded her to protect her income, and access to the CMA Alumni Network, where she can connect with past winners.

CMA is a homegrown Philippines program that started in 2002.  It is a nationwide search for outstanding microentrepreneurs in the country, mounted by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, the Microfinance Council of the Philippines and Citi Philippines, with funding from Citi Foundation.  Now 12 years old, it was adopted as a global program in 2005 and currently implemented in over 30 countries across Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America, Middle East and North America.

By the time Nanay Tess won, the program has honored 100 outstanding Filipino men and women for their invaluable economic contribution to the microfinance industry — the transformation of a meager loan to a thriving microenterprise. These winners, including Nanay Tess, serve as role models to other aspiring entrepreneurs to endlessly overcome challenges and improve their knowledge and skills to excel in their enterprises.

Celebrating International Women’s Day

The roots of International Women’s Day date back to the early 1900s, with observations and celebrations occurring in many countries on various dates. By 1977, the United Nations General Assembly designated March 8 as International Women’s Day, as it continues to be observed today. In some countries, International Women’s Day is recognized as an official holiday.

This year, Citi engaged employees, clients and community partners through more than 220 events across 130 cities in 90 countries, all taking place throughout the month of March.

2015 in fact marks Citi’s fifth global International Women’s Day celebration. For this year’s theme, we adopted “Connecting Women. Inspiring Change. Making Progress.” Many of our planned programs are centered on connecting women in ways that inspire change to foster progress, both personally and professionally.

In keeping with said theme, visiting Nanay Tess provided us the opportunity to connect Citi women in the Philippines, hear first-hand how she inspired and continues to inspire change within her family, among her workers and in her community, and her strong commitment to making real progress and ensure continued prosperity for her, her family, her employees and her hometown.

Bea shared her impression: “Listening to the story of Nanay Tess, it was truly inspiring to learn that what made her successful are values that are useful to all women, even men — strength of faith in God, passion to help her parents and the family, ownership and accountability in everything that she does, loyalty to the company she worked for and last but certainly not the least, resiliency: ability to stand up again after failure. Through God’s grace, she is able to pursue her dreams and emerge victorious.” 

It’s very difficult for me to say what I admire most about Nanay Tess, and judging from the questions and comments by the other volunteers, even Bea’s, all of us were hard pressed to pick just one thing.  Considering her lack of formal education, and in some of the instances also young age, she showed real courage in the face of adversity and never gave up — be it attacks to her person, threats to her family, even a huge unpaid debt that killed her microenterprise overnight.

Nanay Tess gives us hope that escaping poverty is very possible — and personally, she gave me a strong validation why we in Citi need to continue our work in promoting microfinance and financial inclusion.

Her formula isn’t really so secret: just a lot of hard work, mixed in with strong faith and kept burning with love of family.