Social entrepreneurs find home in special emporium

Erika Ng Wong of Karabella Dairy; Maricel Cua and Beng Feliciano of The Parenting Emporium; and Fabien Courteille of Plush & Play

While The Parenting Emporium (TPE) in Quezon City is known to mothers and fathers as a haven for both baby goods and parenting advice, the store also doubles as a supportive retail space for budding local social enterprises—especially those whose products have families in mind.

Two such brands recently made their debut at TPE: Karabella Dairy, which makes ice cream using 100-percent carabao’s milk, and Plush & Play, which sells stuffed toys hand-sewn by women in Bulacan. The latter has been around for four years; Karabella, on the other hand, was launched just last year.

The two social enterprises have one thing in common: Both were born thanks to the resources and support available at the Gawad Kalinga (GK) Enchanted Farm in Bulacan.

Plush & Play, for instance, was created after its founder, Fabien Courteille, saw how many sewers—mostly mothers—in Bulacan had lost their jobs because their former employers preferred to outsource the labor.

“Many of them had to become domestic workers, had to leave their families behind to go abroad, and I don’t think that’s what we wish for a mother to do. She should be able to stay with her own family,” said Courteille.

Thanks to his graduate studies in Business and Entrepreneurship which he took up in his home country, France, Courteille was able to rally the mothers to help them establish Plush & Play.

“We started looking at the kind of products we could make out of sewing, and we decided to focus on stuffed toys, realizing that it’s a good item for storytelling, and that a lot of children don’t have toys; and also that it’s a way to inspire a new generation of Filipino heroes,” said Courteille.

Plush & Play’s stuffed toys are mostly fruits and vegetables—a nod to GK Enchanted Farm, where they were first created.

To make them more relatable to children, Courteille and his team decided to give the toys names based on local celebrities’, such as Anne Kamatis, Manny Pakwan, and Buko Martin.

“We started taking them to events, trying to sell them in the wet market, anywhere,” said Courteille. “Up to the point wherein we became the first Filipino toy to be sold in Toy Kingdom. So it’s a statement: That products can be homemade and still compete side-by-side with any imported product.”

Courteille said he came to the Philippines after being inspired by the work done by GK and its founder, Tony Meloto.

“I wanted to become an entrepreneur, but what kind? This was the question I had, in line with my values—what is my purpose as an entrepreneur?” Courteille said.

It was a similar question that motivated Karabella Dairy founder Erika Ng Wong to make the move from employment to entrepreneurship.

Plush & Play and Karabella Dairy, products of social enterprises which were both conceptualized in the Gawad Kalinga Enchanted Farm in Bulacan, are now available at The Parenting Emporium in Quezon City.

“Karabella started as just a concept I had when I was still working for a multinational [food] company. I realized, after working for them for three years, that I wasn’t really [suited for] corporate,” said Wong, who majored in Business Management, with specialization in Applied Corporate Management, at the De La Salle University. “I was in sales, and a lot of my values were challenged, and so I opted to go somewhere else. I found out about Gawad Kalinga, GK Enchanted Farm, and the concept of social entrepreneurship.”

To learn more about social enterprises, Wong worked as a full-time GK worker. In the course of her work, and given her previous corporate background, she came to a realization: That almost 99 percent of the country’s dairy products are imported.

“[I saw that] there was a big opportunity here, and dairy was a good industry to get into,” she said. “At the same time, [I also saw that] we don’t have a lot of carabao milk in the market. I grew up in the city, and I never tried carabao’s milk up until I joined GK, because that was when I was exposed to the countryside.”

Wong’s research into carabao’s milk revealed a product more premium than cow’s milk, she said. “It has higher calcium content, higher protein and carbohydrates, and therefore gives you more energy.”

While Plush & Play works with skilled sewers, Karabella’s partners are Bulacan’s carabao farmers. Wong fondly calls their her partner Tito Ed.

“We work with a lot of backyard carabao farmers, and that’s how we want to operate,” she said.

After GK Enchanted Farm, these two social enterprises have been given another home at TPE because they “embody what we believe about giving back: Not just by giving dole-outs or contributions, but by educating and empowering those in need to create income for their families,” said Tina Rodriguez, TPE PR and special projects coordinator.

“They are 100-percent homegrown social enterprises, so it’s also our way of being good citizens,” Rodriguez added. “Because TPE is all about believing in and living out the fact that parenting is a legacy, giving back to those in need is part of that legacy we can give to our children.”

Established in 2015 by mothers and best friends Maricel Cua and Beng Feliciano, TPE itself is a social enterprise of sorts. The store’s proceeds serve as funds used to sustain helpful, expert-backed events for parents, such as childbirth classes, breastfeeding seminars, and talks on how to raise teens and tweens.

“We also have support groups, like for breastfeeding, for those with multiples like twins, parents with children with special needs. We also support homeschoolers, because one of the owners is a homeschooling mom,” said Rodriguez.

And while the place wears many hats, TPE, Rodriguez emphasized, can be described simply as a safe and nonjudgmental venue.

“We want parents to feel safe and supported in their decisions,” she added.