Maria Cristina Guerrero: Social entrepreneur

In the second installment of the GMA News Online Lifestyle series Inspirations, we are featuring a business management graduate who found her calling among the indigenous peoples of Palawan. This series of video profiles looks at accomplished Filipinos who are successfully living their dreams. Through their stories, readers who are looking for new directions in life may be able to get ideas on how to pursue their passions. In 1993, the plan was simple: Maria Cristina Guerrero, or Crissy to friends and family, would go on a year-long mission in Palawan as a Jesuit volunteer helping out indigenous groups. And just like any other business management major with standing offers from several multinationals, she was supposed to come back from volunteer work to enter the corporate world. Eighteen years later, those companies still haven’t received that call from Crissy. Today, the 39-year-old assists not only indigenous peoples from Palawan, but other ethnic communities in the region as the executive director of the Non-timber Forest Products Exchange Programme for South and Southeast Asia. Social entrepreneurship is becoming more and more popular nowadays—but how does one become the successful kind? In an interview with GMA News Online, Crissy outlines her formula. It might not work for you and me, but hey, it’s always worth a shot. 1. Make sure you have a strong foundation. The possibilities were limitless for Crissy when she graduated from college in 1993. She had just received a degree in business management from the Ateneo de Manila University and was offered a position in one of the country’s biggest corporations, which she would accept as soon as she came back from Palawan But instead of staying a year, Crissy stayed for five, despite all the curveballs thrown at her. During her first week in Palawan, she had a tricycle accident (the tricycle crashed with her inside it) and a bad case of Ameobiasis (she was on intravenous fluids). Everyone was expecting the fresh graduate to run home right away. What they didn’t know was that Crissy was determined to finish her mission. She was there because of a “different call." The eruption of Mt. Pinatubo and the flashfloods that ravaged Ormoc around that time had made Crissy rethink her career path. “There were a lot of things that brought you to reality… and I was ready to do something else in the beginning," she says. Having something to draw energy and inspiration from, Crissy adds, comes in handy later in life. It’s the individual successes stories from those early years that drive her to this day. These stories include indigenous folk who are finally able to send a child to college, or those that are able to purchase a carabao from the money they earned. “People had new assets that they didn’t have before," she says, smiling. 2. Don’t be afraid of challenges. One of the things that Crissy had to overcome during her volunteer work was the language barrier. Having lived in different countries around Asia for 10 years, Tagalog wasn’t her strong suit. “You go to Ateneo, you listen to Taglish and you think that you can understand [Tagalog] but then you get thrown into a setting where there’s no ‘lish’," she says. It was difficult at first, but she persevered until she became more comfortable speaking the language. “It’s also fueled by the interest to speak directly with the people and not go through a translator," she adds. Although Crissy was sure she wanted to devote an entire year to volunteer work, her parents weren’t exactly warm to the idea, and so she requested to be assigned somewhere nearer. But the program organizers had a different idea and sent her to Palawan, an hour’s flight away from her home in Manila. “I think part of me really wanted to go [even if] I wasn’t totally prepared. But it was meant for me because that’s the foundation of all my work now," she says. She took a year off from community work to get a masters' degree from Cornell University, but promptly came back to help start NTFP-EP. Crissy is currently based in Indonesia, her husband’s home country, where she’s bringing over her experience from indigenous communities and forests in the Philippines. Her new milieu has proven to be a whole different challenge for Crissy. Unlike the Philippines, forests are plentiful in Indonesia with over 130 million hectares, but they also burn 1 million hectares annually. The biggest challenge, however, is changing the way Indonesians see non-timber forest products. “A lot of NGOs are still focused on advocacies and lobbying, and serious enterprise work has not really been a priority," she says. 3. Find the gap in the system and work your magic from there. Crissy was a member of business and community-based organizations in college, but as an undergrad, she didn’t dabble in forests and indigenous communities. After college, she managed to use her acquired business know-how in a non-academic endeavor. Most forest-based or indigenous communities, Crissy says, have been engaged in trading and making non-timber forest products for a long time. But they needed help in marketing their products and negotiating with dealers. In 2009 for instance, a Spanish department store wanted to order a huge volume of notebooks with woven covers. The problem, she explained, was that the community that produced the design they wanted couldn’t meet deadlines. “[You need to understand] the capacities of the community and transfer that to the market while still being able to capture the opportunity that the market provides," she says. Crissy’s group told the client that they would have to make do with different designs from several communities. 4. It’s not all about the money. We may scoff at the song that goes, “it’s not about the money, money, money," but Crissy says that in this industry, it really isn’t. Assisting indigenous communities, she notes, involves more than just empowering them and augmenting their income; it’s about teaching resilience. “There will always be shocks to businesses whether they’re in the urban or rural areas—things will cost more, cost less, you’ll run out of this and that," she says. Communities that are dependent on just one kind of product may go broke if natural calamities hamper production. If strong rains persist in forests, for instance, bees can’t come out to make honey, stunting honey harvests. “That’s why we always talk about not just a singular livelihood model but those that have diversity," she said. That means making sure communities tap into different non-timber resources to avoid exhausting them. “Communities are smart, so they’re able to figure things out," she said. More importantly, they need to learn to be dynamic in creating systems that allow non-timber forest enterprises to flourish. “That’s why we also work at the policy level and the resources—like how to make sure there’s enough for the current and future generations," Crissy adds. 5. Trust your gut—it’s there for a reason. “If there’s a gnawing feeling, then listen to that gnawing feeling and you search," she says. Cheesy as it may sound, Crissy decided to do volunteer work because she felt a “disconnect" in the concept of having a high-earning corporate job while people were suffering from natural calamities. But it wasn’t just heart and instinct that she used. It’s also important to use your skills wisely, she adds. Filipinos have a knack for creativity, Crissy observes. “You see the materials [from indigenous communities] and you see the potential. You [also] see the possibility [of bridging] the gap." Even those who aren’t keen on pursuing a career in social entrepreneurship can pitch in, she adds. “We hope that people can be responsible in their buying and support green investments [so that they] find their role in the movement of pursuing fair and green practices," she says. Crissy also urges budding entrepreneurs to persevere in the first two years of the business and to band together to lobby for government support. “Starting in any business is difficult, much more this kind of business so you need that kind of national recognition that this is something good," she says. Finally, she says it always should go back to the success stories of individuals and groups. “It’s the possibilities of change—that you can be an instrument towards change," she says. – YA, GMA News Do you know someone who inspires you to live your dreams? Write us at lifestyle@gmanews.tv and get the chance to see their video profiles featured in this section.