DAVAO CITY, Philippines – Four Mindanao-based social entreprises are competing with other 16 Filipino counterparts outside the region in the final round of the Sinag Accelerate.
The social enterprises – Balay-Balay 3D Architecture, Coffee for Peace, Lamlifew Village Museum, Virtualahan – made it Sinag Accelerate’s Top 20 Sinag Entrepreneurs.
The announcement was made Tuesday, August 22, by BPI Sinag, a project under the Bank of the Philippine Island’s social development arm.
The project aims to discover, equip, and empower social entrepreneurs “who can help uplift Filipino communities.”
In its announcement, BPI said the selected social enterprises went through a five-day intensive business bootcamp, where they were trained to scale-up and expand to deepen their impact in community development.
Balay Balay 3D Architecture, operated by Davao-based Swito Corporation, creates educational toys that engages children in learning and appreciating Filipino architecture.
Coffee for Peace supplies Arabica beans and Philippine civet coffee, and sources them from communities that observe principles of fair trade.
Lamliflew Village Museum is a community-based museum managed by the Lamlifew Tribal Women’s Association in Sarangani.
Virtualahan, founded by Davao’s Ryan Gersava, is a company provides an intensive digital skills training to people who have medical, physical, and mental disabilities to help them start working as online service providers.
These enterprises, along with the rest of the 20 participants, will receive advertising mileage and access to credit line from BPI’s Ka Negosyo. P500,000 will be awarded to the top 5 awardees, and P100,000 for the next five awardees.
They will be screened again for top 10 in November. (davaotoday.com)
