THE WINNERS (seated) of the 12th Citi Microentrepreneurship Awards flash their winning smiles on the day of the awards ceremony. With them are the members of the national selection committee, featuring leaders from business, the public sector, academe and media.
Poverty forced Teresita Valdez to stop going to school when she was 13, but she did not let circumstances prevent her from getting an education.
“As a 13-year-old factory worker, I learned as much as I could. [The factory] became some kind of school,” said Valdez, who used to remove fish heads in the bagoong factory where she worked after leaving school.
Valdez was such a diligent student that she eventually mastered her trade.
Years later, her experience, resourcefulness and initiative enabled her to develop a recipe to extend the bagoong’s shelf life without using preservatives.
That winning edge helped the Malolos-based Valdez to become a manufacturer of bagoong and anchovy sauces. And for her efforts, she was declared national winner of the 2014 Citi Microentrepreneurship Awards (CMA).
Valdez’s indomitable spirit ensured her business’ survival when, in 2007, her top customer failed to repay a P2-million debt, a big setback even for bigger enterprises.
Valdez and her husband had to sell their home to raise new capital.
Then in 2010, she secured a P10,000 loan from Tulay sa Pag-unlad Inc. to finance another expansion plan.
Today, she has 22 employees and has started selling to customers abroad.
Valdez and her husband, with whom she has two sons, have been giving back to the community by supporting the education of loyal employees.
Microentrepreneurs such as Valdez are recognized every year to inspire other Filipinos to consider entrepreneurship as a way out of poverty.
The nationwide annual CMA search, now on its 12th year, is jointly undertaken by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), Microfinance Council of the Philippines Inc. (MCPI) and Citi Philippines.
The other CMA recipients this year were:
Ernanie Llema, regional awardee for Luzon and proprietor of REL Seafoods Buyer and Dealer. He is engaged in crabmeat processing and has a dealership in Masbate province. Supported by CARD Bank, the microbusiness now generates over a million pesos in annual sales and provides employment to local residents.
Teresita Nicanor, regional awardee for Visayas, set up Paning’s Squid Rings with her husband in Estancia, Iloilo. Their business is backed by Valiant Bank. Nicanor’s special recipe has made her product so popular that four big supermarkets in the province now repack and sell it. She has eight employees and her company has crossed the million-peso mark in annual net profit.
Edamil Patta, regional awardee for Mindanao, opened Wonderland Coffee Shop and Sari-sari store in Bongao, Tawi-Tawi, with her husband. Widowed in 2011 and left with huge hospital bills, the mother of two sought the assistance of KFI Center for Community Development Foundation Inc., a local microfinance institution, to keep her modest venture going.
Special awards were also given to former seaman Johnny Laraño (agri microbusiness), a Valiant Bank client who practices and advocates modern farming methods; Purificacion Tagulinao (innovation), a client of Tulay sa Pag-unlad Inc. who manufactures native bags and other products made of pandan; and Rosma Cabillon (community leadership), a Valiant Bank client who buys and sells squid, crabs and seaweed in Estancia, Iloilo.
The seven new awardees brought to 100 the total number of CMA recipients since 2002.
BSP Governor Amando M. Tetangco Jr., in his keynote address, paid tribute to microentrepreneurs, saying “we continue to see how microfinance empowers, transforms and uplifts individuals, families … even communities … The stories of our CMA finalists and awardees attest to how humble beginnings can grow into progressive businesses with higher incomes because they gained access to finance, to microcredit.”
Also, appropriate products and delivery channels enabled financial institutions to serve markets that were previously marginalized, advancing the broader goal of financial inclusion, he said.
Tetangco commended microfinance institutions for “directly catalyzing change on the ground—in small businesses, in poor households.”
Batara Sianturi, chief executive officer of Citi Philippines, said the annual awarding rites were a “recognition that microfinance had become a significant tool in poverty alleviation.”
Awardees, he said, demonstrated how they were able to reverse the downward pull of poverty. What they were doing for their communities reflected the bayanihan culture in the Philippines.
The awardees, Sianturi added, used their businesses “not only to improve their lives but also those of the other members of their communities.”
Maria Anna R. Ignacio, MCPI chair, who inducted the new awardees into the CMA Alumni Network, said the winners would be getting mentoring, one-on-one sessions with experts who could help them identify areas for improvement and respond to their specific needs.
The network would also enable them to interact with, and learn from, each other.
Tetangco, Sianturi and Ignacio sit on the CMA National Selection Board, which includes Philippine Daily Inquirer chair Marixi Rufino-Prieto; Secretary Imelda M. Nicolas, chair, Commission on Filipinos Overseas; former Monetary Board member Antonino Alindogan, Jr; Jose Maria Concepcion III, president and CEO of RFM Corp.; and Darwin Yu, dean of the School of Management, Ateneo de Manila University.