Reason And Reward For Ayala Foundation

Ayala Foundation views the Filipino as a partner, a perspective that turns bystanders and beneficiaries into co-authors of our nation’s progress. This view has the power to infuse people with a do-it-yourself spirit that can truly animate a project, inspire action, and create lasting positive change.

For 46 years, Ayala Foundation has been working to enhance the lives of Filipinos. Many changes have taken place since 1961 when Col. Joseph McMicking and his wife, Mercedes Zobel, established Filipinas Foundation, the precursor of Ayala Foundation. What has not changed is the foundation’s commitment to contribute to national development by creating programs that enrich, empower, and enable the Filipino people. According to current Foundation president Vicky Garchitorena, the foundation has continuously worked "to support and enhance projects and deliver the best results for our staff, partners, donors, clients, and beneficiaries. We continue to seek ways to bridge gaps, empower, and inspire."

This spirit is evident in the projects of the foundation’s Center for Social Development. CSD creates innovative, relevant and sustainable social technologies that enrich the lives of underpriviledged Filipinos. It spearheads Gearing up Internet Literacy and Access for Students or GILAS.

It also organizes the Ayala Young Leaders Congress, an annual three-day summit that convenes 70 top student leaders from colleges and universities around the country. The congress gives them the opportunity to listen to and interact with Filipinos here and abroad who have lived lives of excellence, passion, and integrity. Now on its ninth year, the congress is part of the Ayala group’s leadership program, Shaping Tomorrow’s Leaders.

The Ayala Young Leaders Alliance, composed of congress alumni, now has 16 chapters around the Philippines that have been actively and independently showing community leadership by responding to disaster, holding inter-faith dialogues, and publishing the country’s first youth-empowerment magazine, Starfish.

Ayala Foundation’s Center of Excellence in Public Elementary Education (Centex) is another project that demonstrates the power of working in communities. Centex has established that it is possible to improve the physical, financial, and human resources of a public school and transform it into a center for quality education.

It also succeeded in transforming the parents of its graduates into entrepreneurs, helping them form a cooperative that successfully bid for a slot in the College of the Holy Spirit Manila High School–Centex cafeteria. The proceeds of their food service cover the food and transportation expenses of their children.

Ayala Foundation seeks to enrich the lives of Filipinos by creating opportunities for continuing education and discovery. These services are provided by the Ayala Museum and the Filipinas Heritage Library with the goal of establishing a sense of identity and a sense of pride in our unique culture.

The museum has taken great steps not only to host significant collections of fine art, but also to preserve, document, and exhibit artifacts of Philippine history. In 2006, it mounted its first international exhibition of Philippine art at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. The exhibition, "Pioneers of Philippine Art: Luna, Amorsolo, Zobel," chronicled one hundred years of Philippine painting from the late 19th to the late 20th century through the work of three artists—Juan Luna (1857–1899), Fernando Amorsolo (1892–1972), and Fernando Zobel (1924–1984).

For its part, the Filipinas Heritage Library serves as a knowledge hub, providing traditional library services as well as workshops on writing, photography, documentary making, and other topics. Recently, it undertook the development of Philippine trade history as one of its core collections, to emphasize the multi-faceted richness of our heritage.

The library also produces print and electronic publications, and is presently digitizing its entire collection. This is just one of the many ways that Ayala Foundation leverages technology to support and enhance its services.

The foundation is constantly stretching its boundaries to bring its programs to more people. It has initiated a community-based project called the Education and Livelihood Skills Alliance, or ELSA, in an attempt to help provide education and livelihood opportunities to the youth of Mindanao whose lives have been disrupted by armed conflict.

With the help of global, national, and local partners, ELSA empowers and encourages Mindanao youth by giving them access to education infrastructure and by implementing inter-faith dialogues. These activities are envisioned to help them become more involved and better equipped to address the issues in their communities and in the entire region.

Pushing even further, Ayala Foundation established Ayala Foundation USA (AF USA) in 2000 to serve as a bridge between the Philippines and the growing Fil-Am community in the United States. AF USA advocates diaspora philanthropy as a way of addressing development needs in the Philippines. AF USA also creates opportunities for exchange among Filipinos through its Fil-Am Youth Leaders Fellowship program. Fellows of the program engage in a two-month immersion in the Philippines and are exposed to the harsh social realities of our country. The program seeks to nurture the bond between Fil-Ams and their mother country, and transform fellows into advocates of and for the Philippines.

Ayala Foundation chairman Jaime Zobel de Ayala once wrote: "The Filipino is what moves and inspires Ayala Foundation, what goads us to find the better solution, the willing partners, and the resolve to persevere in the face of difficulties."

Ayala Foundation continues to celebrate the Filipino, finding in him both the reason and the reward for all its efforts. Zobel sums it up thus: "In the end, what we are and always will be is an organization of Filipinos committed to serving fellow Filipinos."