MANILA, Philippines - Using locally grown tahong or mussel shells to make stronger hollow blocks, Leyte-based Power Builders won the grand prize in the pilot run of Project Pagsulong, PLDT KaASenso’s P1-million youth challenge.
The young construction entrepreneurs from Leyte – Maria Katrina Alfante,
Geneline Apuya, and Mark Anthony Capinan – found a unique way of providing the construction industry with alternative hollow blocks to build homes.
Power Builders bagged the P500,000 first prize of the inaugural Project Pagsulong challenge participated in by 374 budding entrepreneurs nationwide who put together businesses that can help alleviate poverty.
PLDT KaAsenso partnered with PLDT-Smart Foundation, The Outstanding Students of the Philippines Alumni Community (TOSP-AC), and RFM Foundation.
Second prize (P300,000) went to Benguet-based Night Crawlers, which came up with an organic farming project that tackles environmental problems in the Cordillera agricultural hinterlands. The Benguet team is composed of Jon Ray Waking, Herman Danis, Alima Bedejim,
Noel Lenguaje and Sheirelyn Banglig.
Coming in third was Spark Project, a Metro Manila-based team with its online crowd-funding platform to fuel innovative projects. The team is composed of Patch Dulay, Ian Corpuz and Krz Lopez.
They received P200,000.
“It was a challenging task for the judges to pick the eventual winner for this inaugural youth challenge since all the finalists had very unique concepts and made powerful pitches that manifested their passion to help their respective communities,†said Jonathan de Quiroz, PLDT KaAsenso product manager.
CareersForHealth by Team Alliance for Improving Health Outcomes (AIHO) earned the “People’s Choice Award†and a P100,000 grant based on public online voting, which generated more than 180,000 combined votes from the website, Facebook and Twitter.
AIHO is composed of medical doctors Maria Ellen Licup, Paolo Victor Medina, Beverly Lorraine Ho and Jacqueline Frances Momville.
Project Pagsulong was launched in July 2012 and received entries from 47 out of 80 provinces nationwide. Entries came from as far as Benguet province in the Cordilleras to Tacurong in Sultan Kudarat in Mindanao, and reflected both the needs of these provinces as well as the
concerns of today’s youth over poverty.

The 10 finalist teams attended a nine-day bootcamp where they were mentored by industry
experts. Each team was given a coach from the TOSP Alumni Community to help prepare for the final judging last month.


The choice of the winners was based on the social impact of their project, particularly in addressing a specific social need or issue; innovativeness, inventiveness and the use of ICT to enable their enterprise; the sustainability and scalability of the idea to generate revenue in succeeding years; and the team’s leadership and management in executing the project.