I find being a judge – not in a court of law, for sure – to be an uplifting experience. Whether live – as when you judge a performance in a contest – or evaluating dossiers of candidates or projects for an award, being part of a panel of judges is serious and hard work; sometimes you get dossiers several inches thick that you have to read through and even have to do additional research just to cover all angles, before you get to interview the nominees or deliberate on the projects.
But it is uplifting and rewarding because you get to see, know about and meet some pretty outstanding people, performances and projects. Most of the time, getting nominated or reaching the finals means the person or project has already met and passed a rigid standard, being a cut above the ordinary. Of course there are some duds, but it’s tolerable in the face of all the excellence one is confronted with.
Over the past couple of months I’ve done my turn as a judge – the third time around – for the League of Corporate Foundations (LCF)’s Guild Awards. For the year 2024, 71 projects were nominated in eight categories: Education, Health, Environment, Enterprise, Disaster Resilience, Arts and Culture, Financial Inclusion and Collaboration. The winners were announced and awarded recently, during the LCF’s three-day CSR Conference and Expo held in Makati City.
The League of Corporate Foundations was founded in 1991 as a network of operating and grant-making corporate foundations and corporations in the country. Among its significant initiatives are the organization of the Philippine Council for NGO Certification (to weed out fly-by-night, Napoles-type organizations and foundations), establishment of the CSR Institute and its being a founding member of the ASEAN CSR Network.
The LCF Guild Awards is an annual recognition of outstanding CSR programs undertaken by any of its 99 member-corporations, a seal of excellence in corporate citizenship, if you will. Corporate foundations submit projects implemented during the year under review – in this case, 2024; the entries are then vetted by LCF before submission to the members of the panel, who receive the nominations blind, meaning corporate/foundation names and other identifying information are redacted. We review, we score, we deliberate but we do not choose the winners; entries with the highest cumulative scores are named finalists; these are submitted to the LCF Board and finally to the LCF membership who vote for the winners.
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While all the projects meet or fill a need in a community or communities – very often the community where the company is located or operates – I find a foundation’s work is most effective when it leverages the corporation’s core competency, and when a CSR project takes off from the company’s core line of business, thus making use of what it and its management and workforce are good at. Two projects caught my eye when I finally found out, after the judging, which foundations were behind the projects.
Cebuana Lhuillier, the largest micro-financial institution in the country, is expanding access to financial services across the country by partnering with schools, local governments and NGOs in the #LahatKasama Finlit Caravan. The program makes use of in-person sessions as well as popular digital modes like TikTok, FB, IG and others, led by president and CEO Jean Henri Lhuillier, who curated and even “starred” in some of the segments in the engaging #LahatKasama Money Guro video series, which offers practical tips and answers the public’s questions; the series has amassed over 95 million views.
Engaging with schools from Benguet to Southern Leyte to the Davao provinces to Sulu as well as ALS (Alternative Learning Systems) sites, the program has opened the doors to financial literacy for millions in far-flung areas, particularly the youth, a bonus of which is an increase in the depositor base of its microfinance bank by over eight million. For example, 1,500 University of Makati students created personalized financial plans as a culminating activity of their engagement with #LahatKasama.
The Knowledge Channel has been broadcasting since late 1996 and has been a moving force for distance education in the Philippines. I’ve had the privilege of joining a few of their forays out to far-flung areas (the most memorable was to Languyan island in Tawi-Tawi) to connect schools to receive Knowledge Channel broadcasts, which not only provided basic education videos but also adult education, numeracy and other practical topics.
The Knowledge Channel Foundation’s latest initiative is the Basa Bilang Project, which develops and distributes curriculum-based animated shows designed specifically for Grades 1 to 3 Filipino learners.
The Basa Bilang Project is a win-win-win. First of all, the animated shows are created by Filipino writers, illustrators, animators, musicians and voice talents based on Filipino stories and embodying Filipino values. This engages the students with topics that are familiar to them; for example, instead of castles and princes, there are jeepneys and fiestas and everyday life scenarios. This in turn makes it easier for teachers to connect with the students and keep their interest.
There are over 1,500 animated videos covering three areas: Wikaharian, a Filipino literacy show using folk tales and idioms to strengthen reading comprehension in the mother tongue; Ready, Set, Read!, English stories narrated with a Filipino touch; MathDali, which teaches basic numeracy through culturally resonant storytelling and visual humor.
These are distributed through free and cable TV as well as online (FB, YouTube). Schools in areas with limited or poor internet access are provided with a portable media library with a hard drive pre-loaded with the videos.
From just 18 hours of educational programs on cable TV in 1996 through a shutdown due to loss of franchise, a pandemic that put the focus on distance and remote learning, the Knowledge Channel continues to address the crisis that plagues our educational system.
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And what is this buzzword CSR? AI said: Corporate Social Responsibility refers to a business approach where companies integrate social and environmental concerns into their operations and interactions with stakeholders… This often involves considering the “triple bottom line” – economic, social and environmental factors – in their decision-making.
The projects in the LCF Guild Awards considered yet another – and perhaps the most important – bottom line: the human factor. For the ways the projects have benefited and uplifted the people, they are, without doubt, all winners.