and an intersection begging for your
help what do you do how does that make
you feel this is something that you know
really hits you deep we’re going to feel
like there’s so much you want to do but
do you give them your spare change the
food you have in the car or do you kind
of just put your head down knock on the
window and ignore them because it makes
you feel uncomfortable I can’t imagine
what it would be like to be a kid it’s
so desperate barefoot
looking for a handout it’s one of those
things that just hits you hits you
really deep as a kid I just dreamed
about being a Filipino so that I could
eat as many mangos as I wanted as a
Filipino American I was able to go back
and forth to the United States and to
the Philippines and one of the things
that struck me the most was seeing how
some people had so much and how some
people had so little as a young person I
didn’t really understand what that was
but as I grew up I started to embrace
more about what it really meant to be
Filipino you know the spirit of the by
Mia and social entrepreneurship is
something that I learned is a tool that
can be used to help solve some of the
biggest problems that we face in the
planet it’s about using business
techniques to solve some social and
environmental issues that we face every
day by using the three pillars of
sustainability people planet and
progress we can work to create
businesses and great profits that have
purpose these are the triple bottom-line
measures which new companies that really
want to make a difference in the world
embrace it’s the new measure of success
for companies that will change the world
I learned that my mission was going to
be something bigger than myself
I wanted to create some of the greenest
products in the world while helping
create jobs for some of the
even the most so BAM bike revolution
cycles is really for me a movement that
tries to bring bamboo business social
entrepreneurship into a more relevant
and more impactful way of doing business
kind of a recreation of what businesses
should be doing and the people that you
work with in any company are really the
heart and soul of the business um
business model for me the people in our
communities that we work with are our
biggest assets and investing in these
communities is one of the most ways to
ensure that you’re going to have a
sustainable impact so I actually started
out as a volunteer for a group called
gawad kalinga which means to give care
they build housing for the poor and in
my experience with them we learned that
you know just having a house over your
head a roof over your head isn’t enough
to really sustain you for a good living
so you need a job and one of the things
that we did was going to the community
in a jeep a village and create jobs and
what we do is we train the people how to
build bamboos bikes and we call them our
band builders they really are the soul
of our company we couldn’t do anything
without them so if you take the zoom out
and you look at where we work this is in
a community in Victoria Tarlac they’re a
rice producing part of the country in
the middle of Luzon it’s hot it’s dry
they’re very prone to effects of climate
change and it’s really a hard
subsistence lifestyle for most people so
we went in and wanted to improve the
skill level and empower the community
with certain useable techniques and
skills that could add value to bamboo
and create more innovative products so
here we’ve got two of our first builders
this is Nell and Ferdie and the three of
us had to really figure out from scratch
how to turn
bamboo into a bite that you can write
and custard life with so it’s been an
incredible journey and it took a long
time for us to really figure out exactly
what we were doing so it’s really
important to know that you can start as
a novice if you want to do something you
don’t let yourself get intimidated by
the fact that you don’t know how to do
it now because you put in the time and
effort you can learn how to do anything
so what we did was ensure that the
people we worked with our builders had a
sustainable livelihood and what we mean
by that our full-time employment with
benefits so Social Security benefits and
health benefits health insurance so that
they can focus on the work and not worry
about what it takes you know on a
day-to-day basis to to make a living and
this guy is a third employees name is
Fred he was born with a physical light
deformity but he was still harvesting
rice as his primary occupation he also
was doing a joke with one leg you know
doing a tricycle driving but we found
that his hands are some of the most
talented in our group and he’s one of
our best craftsmen so we wanted to
ensure that you know his commute to work
was literally just riding his BAM bike
about a hundred meters from his home to
the workshop that we put in the
community this was a conscious decision
that made life a little more difficult
for me because you know it’s in the
middle of Victoria Tarlac but it was
right in the middle of their village
which was convenient for them and again
taking care of the people in our company
is one of our most important things
furthermore we invest a percentage of
all of our sales to go into the
community you want to reinvest in the
future and one of the ways in which we
do it is if we have a feeding program
for some of the kids so the kids that
attend school get the feeding program as
part of our reinvestment and then we’re
also supporting the preschool teacher’s
salary and the scholarship program so we
want to ensure that people can see the
value and then
in getting a proper education and
actually ferdy’s daughter is going to
graduate college this year and she’ll be
the first kid from the community to get
college degree and that’s one of the
ways in which we can work to break the
cycle what I’ve really been focused on
what really drives me is working to
uplift the community and I love seeing
the kids you know every time I go back
to the village they start screaming
quia Brian and you know what I see are
smiles and I see people growing and I
see that their capacity to dream of a
better future is present and to break
the cycle of poverty you need kids to
feel like they have the power to dream
and to make better lives for themselves
so this is one of the reasons why we do
what we do with regards to the planet
business as usual for a lot of companies
has treated our earth like an
externality meaning you know they can
mine materials over here poison the
rivers over there taking care of the
planet has been something of an
afterthought we wanted to integrate this
into the core principles of what we do
and have sustainable manufacture so we
use bamboo arguably it’s the greenest
building material on the planet it’s
super strong it absorbs carbon dioxide
it stabilizes soil prevents flooding and
there’s a whole host of ecological
benefits that bamboo provides so using
that as a raw material is really
important because we know that it
contributes to sustainable manufacturing
and the bicycle is arguably the most
efficient machine ever created by math
in terms of the amount of energy you put
in and the distance and energy that you
can cover to get out you can see that
bicycles are a great way that people
have been getting around forever and
this is a shot from Metro Manila where
you all know the traffic’s like it’s
miserable you’re stuck you’re inhaling
fumes you can’t control your own time
and you’re
Destinee but with the proper
infrastructure and on a bicycle you’re
in control of your time and the biking
industry around the world is growing so
we want it to be a part of this to
create a movement towards sustainability
so with Bamm bike we really see
ourselves as a sustainable lifestyle
company we wanted to help create the
environment where people can make good
decisions that are healthy for them
their communities as well as our planet
so in our manufacturing techniques we
actually use this kind of philosophy
where it’s waste equals food and what we
mean by that is some of the rice hulls
that would have normally been burnt in
the middle of the field just to get rid
of them we capture them and we burn them
in a controlled environment through a
smoker which we’ve developed which
treats the bamboo so we put the bamboo
in these chambers
it’s just steel drums which we’ve up
cycled to turn into a kind of natural
bamboo treatment method so the heat
helps dry the bamboo the smoke helps
treat the bamboo from the powder beetles
and then the ash from what we burn gets
back into the field so it’s a
closed-loop system we don’t allow
anything to be wasted because waste
equals food for some other cycle and
some other system in our process
furthermore some of the offcuts that we
have when we build the bikes and we
don’t use the whole poles for the bikes
but we’re left with these little odds
and ends and bits and pieces so we
created a new brand in the new product
called bamboo type we work with the
women in the community to hand sand and
carve these little pieces of bamboo so
that we can add as much value as
possible to something that would have
otherwise been seen as something you
just disposed up so again waste equals
food the offcuts of bamboo turned into a
new light we hood that creates jobs for
women in multiple communities and we use
indigenous woven fabrics for the birth
of ties so it’s just a matter of
rethinking your concept of way
and trying to upcycle it’s better than
recycling because you add value and
that’s really important as you’re
thinking about social entrepreneurship
is systems that can add value to the
resources you have around this and
lastly we want to ensure that we don’t
ever run out of bamboo so what we’re
doing is working with communities around
the Philippines to grow more bamboo than
we harvest it’s a long long process but
it’s much shorter than you know having
to plant and grow trees because in 3 to
5 years you can have mature bamboo poles
which can be used for structural
building progress progress for me is
another way of saying profit with a
purpose and what we’re working towards
is developing a new green economy where
social enterprises can have a platform
to really grow and create more
sustainable industries for people in the
developing world and again this concept
of value-added we are trying to take a
raw material let’s sustainably harvested
in this case bamboo bringing it into
communities where they can do semi
processing breaking it down into poles
treating the bamboo so that it can be
part of a building chain that adds as
much value so working throughout the
supply chain and creating as many jobs
along the way as possible is something
really important so that we can have
what we consider an inclusive growth
economy so I’m not just making money for
one company up top but throughout the
value chain adding as much in terms of
employment and sustainable livelihood as
you can and I consider investing in
bamboo plantation better than putting
your money
in a bank the the rural economy can
really be augmented in the developing
world by planting more bamboo here on
the left you see the beginnings of a
bamboo shoot’ on the right you see a 30
plus meter pole which grew in less than
a year so the rate at which bamboo grows
is phenomenal and you’d be better off
investing in this kind of industry and
putting your money into a bank in some
cases so this whole concept of the BAM
business I feel can help transform our
rural likelihood seeing here in the
Philippines and throughout the
developing world and we’re trying to
improve on an industry that you know
previously is considered the poor man’s
lumber bamboo is used for the by HUBO it
gets broken in two or three years you
know this this whole industry hasn’t
changed much in decades so we’re
breaking the bamboo down actually into
slots which are then ingredients for a
more advanced engineer bamboo product
and in this case we’re creating new
engineered poles which can really
showcase the excellence in the material
and the craftsmanship of the Filipinos
and we’re also trying to just encourage
innovation within the bamboo industry
taking existing building materials and
applying them in different ways coming
up with new ideas experimenting with
what we have at hand and here you can
see we’ve used some of the poles that we
use in the bicycle building process and
apply it to furniture so really the
possibilities for what you can do are
endless
building materials can be replaced and
what I envision is kind of a new lumber
yard for the future where you don’t need
to cut down trees but where we can use
the rapidly renewal
bamboo to plug into existing building
systems so that we can grow and build a
better future and encourage other social
entrepreneurs to use the materials to
create whatever they dream of and in
order to ensure that we work well with
our community
the distance between Metro Manila and
tar-like for example is about 120
kilometers how do we make sure that
we’re building the right things that
were staying on track we installed the
Internet
in the community and we gave them a
tablet and we’re now able to communicate
and connect and that’s been really
important not only is internet access as
you all know so crucial to being able to
connect with each other but what it can
do for rural communities is connect them
to marketplaces and to new ideas and to
education so with the bamboo industry
we’re trying to look back to nature and
change your perspective on a material
that previously was really considered
this poor man’s lumber but now changing
our perspective looking at it as the
building blocks of the future and with
social entrepreneurship I have to tell
you this has been a challenging
challenging journey with bamboo and I
had many days where I felt alone and was
pressed to figure out you know how do i
how do I move forward with this and and
grit
I found grit the stick-to-itiveness is
one of the things that kept me going
I found that grit by understanding my
purpose and really knowing why I got
into this so again the people the planet
and the progress the triple bottom line
those things kept driving me forward and
without that I would have been a little
lost so finding out what your purpose is
your passion these are challenges that
you guys face is young future
entrepreneurs and in order to understand
what it is you want to do and people
always say follow your passion it’s
almost an impossible thing because as a
high schooler you can’t
we know exactly what you’re passionate
so I encourage you to stay curious
follow your curiosity volunteer for some
organization take an internship with
some company that you admire and then
figure out what drives you think about
what kind of vehicle for change you will
be and understand that the road to
entrepreneurship is tough you’re going
to fall you’re going to get some bumps
and bruises but with enough grit
you can sit to it and you’ll find out
that you’ll build the skills necessary
again it’s okay to start as a novice you
don’t have to know exactly what you’re
doing this two-year-old didn’t know what
he was doing when you got on the bike
for the first time but after you know a
little bit of practice and some
stick-to-itiveness you see this kid so
psyched so psyched so you know social
entrepreneurship is a winding way and as
you figure out how to balance your life
what’s important is understanding the
kind of impact you want to have to make
the world a better place and how to make
a living doing it that’s the real trick
of social entrepreneurship so really
think you know what your story is going
to be don’t be afraid to start small
look at the things in your community
put your iphone down when you’re at an
intersection and see what’s around you
start small in your school in your
community in your country these things
can grow and make a larger scalable
impact remember social entrepreneurship
is a tool that can help you make a
profit purpose and the relative
sustainability will always be critical
so people taking care of the planet
people taking care of the communities
lending or planet being stewards of the
environment and progress working for
inclusive growth economy and ultimately
with these tools you’ll be able to find
you
purpose and really make a difference in
this world you’ll be able to make a
profit with a purpose and that’s what
really is important and over on 10 years
here I mean within the Philippines and
social entrepreneur I’ve learned one key
lesson and it’s that success is only
real when share thank you [Applause]