Selling a dream that can come true

AT the Gawad Kalinga Enchanted Farm, products proudly made by Filipinos and French interns and advocates come to life

Who would have thought that one could be so successful selling something as intangible as a dream?

That is the business of Tony Meloto, founder of Gawad Kalinga. This foundation started with Meloto giving the poor “fish,” i.e., building homes with a signature colorful look in poverty-stricken communities around the country.

But as Lao Tzu said, give a man fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. And so Mr. Meloto has moved up from building homes to building dreams.

After building numerous Gawad Kalinga homes and communities, Mr. Meloto has started the Gawad Kalinga Enchanted Farm and the SEED Program, where youth from impoverished families have the opportunity to build and find their dreams.

The School for Experiential and Entrepreneurial Development (SEED) aims to “make wealthy entrepreneurs out of the brightest of the Filipino poor,” Meloto explained during a visit to the Enchanted Farm.

The Gawad Kalinga core group selects top students from public schools to become beneficiaries of the SEED Program, at the end of which the students receive a certificate (the program is currently TESDA-approved and working on its CHED accreditation).

But more than the diploma, what the students get out of this is an experience possibly unmatched by any other college in the metro. This is because of the “experiential” and “entrepreneurship” factors of the program. Meloto has brilliantly partnered with top European schools so that their students or fresh graduates intern at the Enchanted Farm, either partnering with the Filipino SEED students for an entrepreneurial venture or mentoring them on business modules designed specifically for their projects.

The result is a very dynamic interaction of youth from all over the world with the common purpose of building businesses to assist the student beneficiary in achieving his dream business.

It was fascinating watching Louis Faure, from Normandy, speak to a Gawad Kalinga youth. But the French Louis spoke in Filipino and the Filipino scholar, son of a driver, spoke to Louis in French! They are partners on the business Louis is building: an organic egg farm. If Louis and his partner Filipino scholars are true to their business plan, you will soon see these organic eggs from Gawad Kalinga’s Enchanted Farm in the market.

The most successful product of the Enchanted Farm to date is the bottled iced tea, Bayani Brew. This was spearheaded by lawyer-entrepreneur Xilca Alvarez-Protacio, who got help from friends. They tied up with a Gawad Kalinga community to create unique iced tea brews using flavors such as lemongrass—you will quickly identify it!—without preservatives. They started out as just a backyard industry aimed at helping the community. Today, they produce 60,000 bottles a month.

Another success story is the First Harvest Peanut Butter (which is delicious, by the way). This is a more recent product that has been getting recognition at bazaars and at the Ultimate Taste Test event. The product was developed by the mothers in the communities surrounding Enchanted Farm in Angat, Bulacan, then packaged using the skills of the foreign interns. First Harvest now also makes Salted Coco Caramel. This is essentially latik, again learned by the students from the “moms” in the community but given the twist of salted caramel by GK French interns and sesame seeds by GK Taiwanese intern, Tajen.

There is also a group making ice cream using carabao milk that they call Kara Beau; an intern from La Salle has partnered with SEED students to make duck burgers; another group is making mushroom products labeled Kabutehan.

But best of all is when you see the fire in the youths’ eyes. And it’s not just the Filipino scholars who are inspired, the foreign interns are inspired as well, if not more so.

“I came here because I wanted to work for a great cause,” says an intern from Germany.

It’s no simple task. The interns actually live in the farm in Angat, Bulacan. Louis, for one, wakes up at 5 a.m. daily to check the chickens in the GK Chicken Farm. He is a proud, not to mention hardworking, farmer at the young age of 22. During the day, he works on his business model, financial strategies and networking to ensure that in the next couple of years, he achieves his goal of marketing Philippine organic eggs first in Metro Manila then around the world. With his Filipino GK partners, of course.

Best of all, 30 percent of all proceeds go back to the Enchanted Farm. This will go to funding the community and keeping the community alive and inspired for the next batch of entrepreneurs. Talk about sustainable entrepreneurship!

Some products still have a long way to go in terms of flavor, components, recipes. But the important thing is that the dreams of these kids are well on their way to becoming reality.

That’s what Tony Meloto is selling nowadays. And it’s a product that is hard to resist: dreams that do come true.

The Spirit of ’67 will be performing at a benefit performance hosted by Unilab for the Gawad Kalinga Enchanted Farm on October 2 at 6:00 pm at the Pavilion AB of Wack-wack Golf and Country Club.

For ticket information, call +63 2 8864950 or +63 917 8515186 or email [email protected].

For inquiries on Gawad Kalinga or visits to Enchanted Farm, Gawad Kalinga Angela Monique Angelo [email protected].

Updates in margauxsalcedo.com. Follow @margauxsalcedo on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook.