Pilipinas Shell Foundation: Fueling the growth of a better nation

MANILA, Philippines - You can’t fuel real economic growth with indiscriminate credit. You can only fuel it with well-allocated, long-term investment.” So says New York Times financial journalist James Surowiecki, who believes a country’s development impact should only be as good as its sustainability. Shell Philippines, now celebrating its centennial year in the country, has not only contributed to nation-building by offering reliable access to efficient fuel, its corporate social responsibility programs serve as a catalyst to more self-reliant, regenerative communities all over the country.

“Pilipinas Shell has been involved in social programs, even before our foundation was founded. Pilipinas Shell has been influential in the founding of the Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP) as primary contributor. Realizing that we want to create and focus on our own programs, we came up with the Pilipinas Shell Foundation, Inc.,” shares executive director Efren Viron Cruz. Founded in 1982, the foundation has been the petroleum multinational’s arm in complementing the company’s core values of sustainability, environmental consciousness, energy-efficiency, and economic development in the country, by focusing on community-based programs touching on livelihood, skill-improvement, food security and health protection. “We concentrate on the disadvantaged sector of far-flung communities in furthering their opportunities and bettering their lives,” Cruz adds.

The foundation’s first program, the Sanayan sa Kakayahang Industrial (SKIL), commenced in 1983, focusing on technical skill development in equipping the country’s workforce. “It was when a lot of Filipinos were heading out for the Middle East to find work, as well as when the country’s out-of-school-youth population was growing, we came up with a program to develop skills beneficial for long-term employment,” Cruz explains. To date, Pilipinas Shell’s SKIL program has benefitted over 7,000 recipients.

In 1985, the foundation founded SAKA, or the Sanayan sa Kakayahang Agrikultura, a program that aids in disseminating modern and more efficient agricultural practices in the nation’s countryside. Partnering with state universities across the country, the program encouraged succeeding generation of farmers to look into the entrepreneurial benefits of agriculture in expanding their economic opportunities.

Closer to their own backyard, the Pilipinas Shell Foundation also spearheaded the Gas Mo Bukas Ko initiative, to expand the skills and know-how of its staff. “It was initially conceptualized by two dealerships that were aware of the existence of our foundation, and tasked us to develop skill-enriching programs for their gas attendants. We realized its success, and the foundation developed it into a countrywide initiative,” says Cruz. By partnering with TESDA-accredited technical institutions, the program is already in its eighth year, and has successfully graduated 1,200 students in courses such as auto mechanic, bookkeeping, computer technology and welding.

With a firm grip on education and skill-building, Pilipinas Shell’s focus remains on sustainability and efficiency as a way of life, and while its main product — petroleum — may be limited in supply, the impact of these programs can be infinite. “This is the resource that will never run out. Once it is in you, it will never be lost,” says Cruz. “Most of our graduates have helped their siblings pursue their educations. Some have risen in the ranks of their respective careers. We have numerous inspiring stories to serve as motivation for our future graduates, and it had been quite a cycle of success,” he adds.

Pilipinas Shell Foundation, according to Cruz, is also committed to enhancing the quality of life in the communities where the company does business. In its oil depots and refineries in Pandacan and Batangas, for instance, the foundation holds frequent trainings on emergency response and disaster preparedness, disseminating drills in cases of fire, earthquakes or floods. The foundation also initiated the Integrated Farming Bio-System, with the Department of Agrarian Reform, in inculcating organic farming practices for 6,000 agrarian reform beneficiaries.

Understanding fuel’s inevitable impact on the climate and the natural ecosystem, Pilipinas Shell Foundation also observes eco-sustainability programs in Palawan and Batangas, where mangrove reforestation, coastal clean-ups, tree-planting, and a hardwood nursery had been a regular way of life. And during the untimely onslaughts of natural disasters, Shell stations nationwide had served as key drop-off points for disaster relief donations.

Unavoidably tied to the petroleum company’s dedication to fuel efficiency, of course, is traffic alleviation, because millions of gallons of petrol are wasted annually due to clogged citywide roads. “We have many traffic rules and regulations that aren’t properly observed,” Cruz admits. “We hold seminars on road safety for public high school students to properly train them in passenger safety, and how to avoid road accidents due to careless pedestrian habits. These trainings have been so successful, in fact, that the Department of Education has adopted it to be a part of the academic curriculum,” explains Cruz. The foundation also has a professionalized driving school in the pipeline, where commercial drivers will be trained in the fundamentals of defensive driving.

And perhaps the foundation’s greatest achievement is one that is hardly noticeable, but nonetheless impactful. Pilipinas Shell Foundations, Inc.’s Movement Against Malaria is, according to Cruz, “the largest program of the foundation, in terms of coverage and expenditure.” Born out of Pilipinas Shell’s venture in the Malampaya natural gas exploration and production in Palawan — the largest single corporate investment in the national economy, amounting to $2 billion — the program has been beneficial in greatly reducing the endemic malaria cases afflicting the country. Now being operated in 40 provinces nationwide, the movement spends up to P400 million annually in diagnosing, medicating, and preventing the mosquito-borne disease. “With funding from the Global Fund, we, together with the local government units, and the Department of Health, have seen the drastic reduction of malaria patients. From 80,000 since we started in the early 2000, to 20,000 just after four to five years, and now even greatly reduced, we aim to eradicate the prevalence of the disease in the country,” Cruz states.

From offering free medication to malaria sufferers, setting up rural microscopy centers for the efficient and reliable diagnosis of new cases, and distributing over five million insecticide-treated mosquito nets around the country, the Movement Against Malaria is the foundation’s landmark project that is inches away from its goal of making this fatal disease a thing of the past.

As the foundation celebrates a century of its mother company in Philippine shores, the Pilipinas Shell Foundation, Inc. also aims to craft history on its own, by bettering the lives of some eight million Filipinos in just three decades. “From the point of view of the foundation, whatever we do, whether it benefits an individual, a community, a province or, basically, the whole country, they are all important to us. It is simply our commitment of helping people go further,” Cruz says.