GREAT SUCCESS STORY

How Pinay Housemaid Created A Multi-million Business

2007-11-24T19:04:00.000-08:00

Here’s a very inspiring business success story in a major broadsheet lately. Rags to riches stories are stuff of legends - and readers tend to get mesmerized with the dream - but the truth is hard work and perseverance is key. How can a Pinay housemaid (doestic helper or katulong) turn P1k into a multi-million peso soap making business?

In the story of Leonora C. Atienza, or “Aling Nora” - is a story of a ppor Filipina housemaid who was able to turn her Charmica soap business into a million peso business venture. Amazing isn’t it? How did she do it? Well, read on and be inspired.

It was proven time and again that poverty is not hindrance to success. If you will just work hard, have faith and persevere you will surely become successful.

Aling Nora came from a poor family. She and her siblings, 11 of them learned the hard way in their childhood. Their parents are rope maker from Pangasinan, and the children would help their parents day and night in rope making.

But Nora had bigger dreams. After graduating from elementary, she went to Manila and became a housemaid for 3 years. It was a hard life–doing household chores and studying high school at the same time. But Nora didn’t mind. She knew that her dream to be successful will come eventually.

And so at a tender age of 17, with the help of a friend she became a seamstress at Riverside Mills Company in Pasig. She met her husband there Jose Atienza and they had 5 children. Sewing business at that time was not a boom business. Nora quit her job and tried selling all kinds of packed-snacks to her former co-workers. But it was this big dream that prompted her to enroll in a soap making course at the Technology and Livelihood Resource Center.

TLRC is a government institution under the Office of the President that monitors and disseminate technologies that are being developed and assess their applicability. In1980, TLRC started developing training courses and seminars based on the mature technologies that have proven to be ready for the market.

Soap making, candle making,creative food packing are just some of the courses that they offer. Their seminars were always a hit, attended by more than 11,000 individuals yearly.

Just like any other entrepreneur who were just starting, Aling Nora struggled at first in her backyard business. Good timing came in year 2000 for Charmica. Starting with a 1,000 capital, Aling Nora used this amount to buy the ingredients. Together with the help of her family, they started the production in their own kitchen.

But luck seemed to be on Aling Nora’s side, when her daughter was born she named her Charmica and from then on there’s no stopping to Charmica soap…

Today, many companies buy soap from Aling Nora. Among her clients are a big network-marketing company and El Shaddai. She also has celebrity patrons. Among them is Fanny Serrano with whom she struck a partnership to export the product in UK, US and Japan. She was also able to buy a 179-s.q lot in Antipolo City where the technologically-equipped Charmica plant is located. It was a far-cry from the kitchen where she started in the 90’s.

Aling Nora appears happy with the way the business has grown-from a sort of experiment to a bona fide multi-million business capable of churning out thousands of bars of soap that are sold both here and abroad.

And her recipe for success? Aling Nora shares, humility and being hands-on in the business are just some of the key in her success.

So there you have it folks. I hope Aling nora’s story will inspire those small businessman out there and those who are thinking of putting up a business. Good luck!

Leonora C. Atienza

Thumbelina May Redublo

2007-11-24T18:36:00.000-08:00

Age: 30
Job: Waitress
Location: Somewhere in San Francisco

STORY

Thumbelina May Redublo or TM, as what most of her friends call her, worked as an encoder for several years in the Philippines before she had an opportunity to seek for greener pastures.

Armed with a tourist visa, TM went to the US with the sole intention of working there.

"Di bali na akong mahuli doon, at least nakaapak ako sa Amerika,” says TM, who was one of the recipients of the amnesty program. She now has a legal working visa and can roam around the US without fears of getting apprehended by the police. The amnesty program is given to immigrants annually, this type of program allows US to collect taxes from people like her.

Although she had a good job here in the Philippines, her income then was just enough for herself. She wanted to help her family, allow her younger siblings to study and build a new house for her parents.

TM came from a middle class family in Laguna. Her parents own a few hectares of land planted with corn. The plantation made it possible for her to study and work in Metro Manila. Being one of the eldest, TM had to help her parents send her younger siblings to school.

“Siyam kaming magkakapatid, pangatlo ako. Kailangan kong magsikap para magkaroon ng magandang buhay.”

Five years after setting foot on the land of milk and honey, TM was able to send money to build a new house for her parents and allow two of her siblings to finish college. They are now working as encoders on the company where TM used to work. And who knows, they too, can follow the footsteps of their older sister.

TM Redublo, a proud ate and an obedient daughter.

Dante C. Baltazar (An inspiring Success Story)

2007-09-13T19:50:00.000-07:00

NOTHING beats a man who has overcome almost all obstacles in life there are to hurdle. Dante C. Baltazar is one such man forged on the anvil of hardships.

Though not exactly from a poor family, yet Dante wasn’t a man born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth. Baltazar as a young businessman borrowed a personal loan of P3,000 from a local bank and after only three years, converted this capital into a P36-million business empire. After 13 years, would post some P20-million monthly gross sales? But this is getting ahead of the story.

Baltazar’s father was a World War II veteran, a USAFFE (US Armed Forces in the Far East) intelligence officer who was based in Cavite. His mother was a homemaker. But though Dante’s father was a US military officer, his roots from Cavite were mostly into business.

After he married the former Teresita Barbasa, he began learning the actual ropes of the trade—by selling seafood and fruits to his neighbors in Quezon City.

That same year, custom-made tailoring was ebbing, and with it, the era of Ready-to-Wear (RTW) began. Baltazar went into the RTW business by buying goods from Divisoria and selling them to anyone he can convince.

Dante has this unique business pulse, so unerring he could see gold where other could only see brass. “I saw a great potential in the RTW business,” he said. “Thus, I thought of making a personal loan of P3,000 from a local bank. Then, I bought raw materials from Divisoria and delivered these to my sewer-contractor who had his own tailoring shop. Then he had these sent to various Greenhills stores for them to sell through consignment.

Not contented with subcontracting, Baltazar decided to put up his own garments factory in May 1980. As such, he bought six small sewing machines, “which I bought from a garments factory like they were almost junk. I repaired these myself, and named my business City Suits Garments.”

He continues to tell his story: “With my own 20 sewers, my production output grew from 2,000 pieces a month to 15,000 pieces, with a value of around P600,000. My Metro Manila market expanded unbelievably wide—from Greenhills to Baclaran, Manuela-Las Piñas, Divisoria, Quinta Market, Ongpin and Cartimar in Pasay City.”

In 1981, he has practically phased-out all his small non heavy-duty machines, and replaced them with high-speed and special machines. Today, he employs 50 high-speed sewers capable of producing 40,000 pieces of shirts a month, valued at P3 million monthly.

Dante Baltazar has proven that with hard work and dedication, one can succeed. Business may be a risk, but wanting to succeed is a decision.

Lito Camo (Success Story)

2007-09-11T20:27:00.000-07:00

The lyrics and melodies of Lito Camo

By Perry Gil S. Mallari and Photos by Ruy Martinez

Lito Camo’s colorful life could very well be a perfect inspiration for a heart-tugging ballad. But the famous composer prefers to inject lightness and laughter to his songs.

His climb to success can either be a point of envy or an inspiration for many, depending on how they perceive his rags-to-riches story. Armed only with a guitar and a brilliant mind, Camo went through hell before he reached heaven’s glory. I was fortunate to be welcomed to his sanctuary, tucked in a quiet Quezon City village, but filled with such warmth and positive energy.

Luxury cars cramped his garage so he decided to buy the adjacent lot. In one of the cozy rooms, his children are taking turns singing their hearts out on a videoke mic hooked to a huge plasma TV.

Camo, who is the country’s reigning king of novelty songs, is responsible for such hits as “Boom Tarat,” “Spageti” and “Otso-Otso” is basking in opulence. But Camo is no overnight success. His climb to the top is a wonderful story of hope and hard work, timing and tenacity.

A hard life

Camo was born and raised in the town of Bungabon in Oriental Mindoro. His grandparents were relatively well off and were engaged in furniture business. When his grandparents died, their properties were sold and the money was divided among their children. Camo’s parents got their share but unfortunately, they failed to make the money grow. “Ang mga magulang ko hindi sinuwerte [My parents ran out of luck],” Camo recalls, staring at a seemingly blank space. “Kaya mula noon puro hirap na ang pinagdaanan namin [That’s why since then, we experienced the hard life].”

Despite tremendous hardships, Camo commended his parents for their diligence and unwavering spirit in supporting their family. “Ang nanay ko noon gumagawa ng mga bag at alpombra ng kabaong, samantalang ang tatay ko naman sapatero [My mother used to make bags and casket cushions while my father is a cobbler].

The eldest of four children, Camo discovered early that he had the gift of music, something he exploited to the hilt by joining singing contests left and right. Camo often won prize money from these competitions, which he gave in full to the family. After high school, Camo’s parents couldn’t afford to send him to college so he packed his bags and came to Manila to try his luck.

Right timing

In Manila, Camo initially lived with relatives who admonished him to study vocational courses at night and to work during the day. He heeded their advice and took up a vocational course to be a diesel mechanic. “Ang layo nga sa propesyon ko ngayon [The course is remotely connected to my present career],” he remarks.

Wanting to be independent, Camo tried doing odd jobs. He first found employment as a houseboy and later on as a family driver. He had a friend who worked as a family driver. When this friend was about to get married, he asked Camo if he could take his place while he is on honeymoon. That friend never came back and Camo became the official family driver for his boss who owned a placement agency that sent performers abroad.

It was through his boss’s network of friends that he met a certain Eddie Boy who happened to be a sessionist musician for Boom Dayupay who was then actively involved with the R&B band Kulay. Eddie Boy heard Camo sing and asked what is the title of the piece. When he learned that it’s Camo’s original composition, Eddie Boy was impressed and offered to introduce him to Dayupay, who was looking for fresh talents at that time. Camo had serious doubts about himself then and almost hesitated. “Mahina pa ang paniniwala ko noon sa sarili ko kasi iniisip ko taga-probinsya lang ako [I have little faith in myself then because I thought that I was merely a provincial lad].”

The right connections

Camo remembers the thrill he felt when he met Dayupay and the other members of Kulay. It was also the first time for him to set foot in a recording studio. Dayupay liked Camo’s repertoire and promised that he would help him get a break in the music industry. Just three days after his demo, Dayupay called informing that a number of recording studios were interested in his songs.

Camo’s first single “Kung Ikaw ay Nalulumbay” was released by BMG Filipinas (now Sony-BMG) in 1997. “Doon nagsimula si Lito Camo— sa kantang ’yun [What I am today started with that song],” he shares, emphasizing that the piece was instrumental in catapulting him to popularity. The majority of the materials in that first album came from the 70-plus songs he has filed in his small library of original compositions since high school. Though he began singing as young boy, it was only during his teens that Camo began composing songs through impromptu jam sessions with his buddies.

Camo’s initial success was greeted by an overwhelming unbelief. When Camo told his mother that he had already signed a recording contract, she flatly replied, “Totoy, tigilan mo na ’yan at baka dyan ka lang mapahamak [Son, get out of that game before it brings you nowhere].” Even when sent his buddies copies of his CD, they still refused to believe that he already was a recording artist. The only time they were convinced was when they saw him appear on TV. There were a number of ups and downs in Camo’s career since that big break but through perseverance and hard work, he has always managed to bounce back. Camo also admitted that he fared off better in the industry as a composer than as a singer.

Influences and inspirations

Among local songwriters and musicians, Camo expressed high regards for former Eraserhead frontman Ely Buendia. “Hinangaan ko ’yung pagleletra niya at ’yung mga melodies n’ya [ I really admire the way he create lyrics and melodies],” he explains. The Beatles and the legendary rock ’n’ roll icon Juan de la Cruz band also top Camo’s list of ear candies. “Pero mahilig din ako sa mga lumang kanta [But I also like old songs],” he adds with a tone of nostalgia.

Except for a little privacy, Camo needs no special place or gadget to compose a song. He will always prefer solitude given a choice but now that he is already a family man, he could prod himself to churn out a song even while the kids are playing around him or while he is driving. There are times when Camo can finish composing a song in less than 30 minutes though he admits that there were pieces that dragged up to a month to finish.

One thing he can’t stand though is rude interruptions that break his train of thoughts. If situations permit, he likes to work in the attic of his home where there’s absolute peace and quiet. I was witnessed to the numerous awards that lined the walls in this attic that prove that Camo has gone a long way from that Mindoro nobody to who he is now.

The ‘Boom Tarat’ controversy

Camo has become the subject of intrigues lately for allegedly selling the rights of his popular composition “Boom Tarat” to senatorial candidate Miguel Zubiri for a hefty P3 million. The singer-composer has repeatedly denied the allegation adding that those proliferating this rumor know very little of the depth of his relationship to the man running for a senate seat.

The composer discloses that he owes the young politician a lot since it was through Zubiri’s help that he bagged the lucrative commission of composing the political jingle of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and a number of prominent politicians in the elections of 2004. Camo also adds that he will never forget Zubiri’s generosity when the then-Bukidnon congressman shouldered the expenses for his mother-in-law’s costly heart operation. He reluctantly admits though that a number of big-time politicians offered him huge sums for the right to transform “Boom Tarat” to be their campaign jingles but he opted to give it to Zubiri for free. “Sa totoo lang, ako pa ang nag-alok ng “Boom Tarat” kay Migz. [The truth is I am the one who offered the “Boom Tarat” song for Migz. Hindi naman lahat ng pagkakataon, pera lang ang mahalaga [In life, it’s not all about money],” he intones.

Drawing the line

High-brow artists and other purveyors of culture blame Camo’s songs and TV shows such as Wowowee for promoting parochial mentality among Filipinos. They alleged that the infamous Ultra stampede tragedy and little girls whose main wish in life is to become the next Sex Bomb dancer were a few effects of relentlessly feeding the masses’s consciousness with such asinine stuff. “Bakit hindi na lang nila ako pabayaan [Why don’t they just let me be,]” is Camo’s indignant reply to the denigration.

A line must be drawn, he says, between those who write novelty songs and those who compose serious pieces. As far as Camo is concerned, his sole mission is to entertain, period. The value of novelty songs should never be underestimated since “the humor found in these hit songs could have aborted a suicide attempt by some dispirited person somewhere, for all we know,” he rationalizes.

Though Camo believes that the success he’s enjoying now is an amalgam of many different elements, he stresses that perseverance and determination are paramount. These two things are what keep him going during down times. Each new height he has scaled, Camo makes it a point to stop, be thankful and look back where he came from. “Ayaw ko nang danasin ng mga anak ko ang pinagdaanan ko [I don’t want my children to experience the hardships I’ve been through],” he intones. “Sa industriyang ito ’wag kang tatamarin. Kapag tinamad ka, makakalimutan ka ng tao dahil maraming bagong dumarating [You can’t afford to be sluggish in this industry otherwise the people will forget you easily because there’s so many new talents around],” he warns.

After 10 years in the business, there’s no sign of stopping for Camo. At least for now. “Hanggang gusto ng tao ’yung mga ginagawa ko, dire-diretso akong lilikha ng awitin [As long as the public likes what I’m doing, I will continue writing songs],” he says with a quiet resolve.

With a huge dose of unforgettable lyrics and timeless melodies, it looks like Lito Camo is bound to be around for a long while, and more and more Filipinos will continue to take his songs by heart.

Merlyn Francisco (Success Story)

2007-09-11T19:56:00.000-07:00

Former fish vendor now exports paper mâché products

By Niña Catherine Calleja

Southern Luzon Bureau

PANGIL, Laguna -- When Merlyn Francisco, 50, lost her husband to lung cancer seven years ago, she felt her happy life was over.

Merlyn fell into a deep depression and never went out of their house. It seemed, according to her, that her family lost everything.

She shut down their paper mâché business, which has given them livelihood for 21 years, because of loneliness.

But two years later, in 2002, Merlyn snapped out of her stupor and decided to revive the business and their life.

Her family has been producing “basic brown” paper mâché products, which were later on transformed into decorated paper boxes.

Brimming with confidence, and support from a new business and life partner, Merlyn called on the exporters she used to deal with before to let them know she was back in business.

And what a comeback she did. From near scratch when she restarted the business, she now serves purchase orders amounting to millions of pesos from four exporters yearly.

In December last year, she was one of the chosen finalists of the 2006 Citygroup Micro-entrepreneur Award.

Rags-to-riches story

The Francisco family’s tale is a common rags-to-riches story. Merlyn was a fish vendor in the market while her husband Eleseo was a fisherman and a part-time tricycle driver.

“It was very difficult. We had to make both ends meet with so little money,” she said in Filipino.

With seven children, Merlyn said their life became more difficult as the family grew bigger.

When the volume of fish caught from Laguna de Bay dropped due to overfishing and pollution, she decided to look for another work.

In Paete, Laguna, a nearby town that is known for sculpture and handicrafts, she landed a job at a small paper mâché enterprise.

She toiled as a worker there for four years, learning the paper mâché trade and knowing the buyers and exporters.

She resigned in 1986, returned to Pangil, and used whatever she had saved to set up her own paper mâché business.

From humble beginnings, the business grew slowly until 1990, when orders suddenly got bigger. That trend went on for about six years and enabled her, in fact, to employ members of around 30 families in her community.

Business was good she was also able to buy a van and a house and lot for the family.

But a big problem came her way when Eleseo fell ill and was diagnosed to have cancer. It was the most difficult time of her life and of the business.

Merlyn said soaring medical expenses eventually took a toll on their finances, forcing her to sell some of their properties including the van.

Worse, a buyer reneged on a P500,000 worth of orders, eventually leading her to bankruptcy. Eleseo died in 2000.

That’s when Merlyn shut down the business and fell into depression. “We had nothing. We could not borrow money from people since they knew we had no money and could not pay them back,” she recalled.

Until 2002 when she decided to rise up again. In the process of doing so, she met and fell in love with Ronnie Nolial, one of her workers. Ronnie is now her business partner.

A P5,000 loan the couple got in 2005 enabled them to expand the business. They now have 30 employees doing pattern-making, cutting, molding/folding, wrapping, drying, finishing touches and quality control.

They can also service a purchase order worth P400,000 in one month.

Ronnie said their edge against other paper mâché products is their products’ design and quality.

He creates the designs and samples they submit to exporters while Merlyn supervises the production.

“In this business you have to be creative. Usually, when we see beautiful products, we try to modify those and develop our own,” he said.

Even though their business is not really getting big profit, Merlyn and Ronnie still push through with it.

According to them, materials and labor costs account for about 60 percent of their total revenue.

For a product sold at P82, P50 is the cost of materials and labor and P32 will be their profit.

They also felt that their earnings dipped because of the rising cost of materials.

Ronnie shared that in 1993, a bundle of paper board cost them P160, but it has increased now to P1,080.

But still, they want to pursue the business because it is giving their neighborhood a livelihood.

“We don’t want them to be jobless. All of us are benefiting in this business,” Ronnie said.

In the future, they aim to increase their capital and expand the business.

10 Secrets of Successful Entrepreneurs

2007-09-11T00:41:00.000-07:00

by Jenny Fulbright

Running a one-person business is a creative, flexible and challenging way to become your own boss and chart your own future. It is about creating a life, as it is about making a living. It takes courage, determination and foresight to decide to become an entrepreneur. From the relatively safe cocoon of the corporate world, where paychecks arrive regularly, you will be venturing into the unchartered territories of business.

Is there a way to determine whether you can be a successful entrepreneur, or you are better off to work for somebody else? Alas, there is no formula for success. However, most successful entrepreneurs share these ten characteristics. Check if you possess any one of them:

Think success. To attain the kind of success that you want, you need to dream big. Every success story starts with big dreams. You need to have big dreams for yourself - which you want to be somebody rich, famous or fulfilled. You need to have a clear vision of what you want to achieve. But it doesn t stop in dreaming alone. You should actively visualize success in your mind that you can almost feel it, touch it or it is within your reach. Play this image back at every opportunity. What does it feel to triple your current income? How will your life change? What will your business look like if you achieved the million-dollar mark?

Successful entrepreneurs possess an attitude of openness and faith that you can have what you want if you can simply envision it as the first step on the path of action to acquiring it. Management gurus have taught us the power of visualization - seeing yourself in your mind as having accomplished your dreams. If you want to be a successful writer, envision yourself signing books for a throng of people who have lined up to have your autograph. If you want to be rich, picture yourself in luxurious surroundings holding a fat bank account. And the process of envisioning success for you should be a constant activity! You need to think that you are successful (or will be one) every single waking hour. A personal development coach shared me her secret to help her continuously visualize her goals for the moment: when climbing stairs, recite your goal with every step you take. So if you want more money, say I will have money in every step of the stairs. This technique will reinforce your goal and keep it fresh in your consciousness.

Be passionate with what you do. You start a business to change any or all part of your life. To attain this change, you need to develop or uncover an intense, personal passion to change the way things are and to live life to the fullest. Success comes easily if you love what you do. Why? Because we are more relentless in our pursuit of goals about things that we love. If you hate your job right now, do you think you will ever be successful at it? Not in a million years! You may plod along, even become competent at the tasks, but you will never be a great success at it. You will achieve peak performance and do what you have to do to succeed only if you are doing something that interests you or something that you care about. Entrepreneurs who succeed do not mind the fact that they are putting in 15 or 18 hours a day to their business because they absolutely love what they do. Success in business is all about patience and hard work, which can only be attained if you are passionate and crazy with your tasks and activities.

Focus on your strengths. Let s face it you cannot be everything to everybody. Each of us has our own strengths and weaknesses. To be effective, you need to identify your strengths and concentrate on it. You will become more successful if you are able to channel your efforts to areas that you do best. In business, for example, if you know you have good marketing instincts, then harness this strength and make full use of it. Seek help or assistance in areas that you may be poor at, such as accounting or bookkeeping. To transform your weakness to strength, consider taking hands-on learning or formal training.

Never consider the possibility of failure. Ayn Rand, in her novel The Fountainhead, wrote, It is not in the nature of man - nor of any living entity, to start out by giving up. As an entrepreneur, you need to fully believe in your goals, and that you can do it. Think that what you are doing will contribute to the betterment of your environment and your personal self. You should have a strong faith in your idea, your capabilities and yourself. You must believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that you have the ability to recognize and fulfill them. The more you can develop faith in your ability to achieve your goals, the more rapidly you can attain it. However, your confidence should be balanced with calculated risks that you need to take to achieve greater rewards. Successful entrepreneurs are those who analyze and minimize risk in the pursuit of profit. As they always say, no guts, no glory.

Plan accordingly. You have a vision, and you have enough faith in yourself to believe that you can achieve your vision. But do you know how to get to your vision? To achieve your vision, you need to have concrete goals that will provide the stepping-stone towards your ultimate vision. Put your goals in writing not doing so just makes them as intangible fantasies. You need to plan each day in such a way that your every action contributes to the attainment of your vision. Do you foresee yourself as the next Martha Stewart of hand-made home furnishings? Perhaps today, you need to see an artist to help you conceptualize the new line of hand-made linens that you hope to launch. Intense goal orientation is the characteristic of every successful entrepreneur. They have a vision, and they know how to get there. Your ability to set goals and make plans for your accomplishment is the skill required to succeed. Plan, plan and plan - because without which failure is guaranteed.

Work hard! Every successful entrepreneur works hard, hard and hard. No one achieves success just by sitting and staring at the wall every single day. Brian Tracy puts it out this way, You work eight hours per day for survival everything over eight hours per day is for success. Ask any successful businessperson and they will tell you immediately that they had to work more than 60 hours per week at the start of their businesses. Be prepared to say goodbye to after-office drinks every day, or a regular weekend get-away trip. If you are in a start-up phase, you will have to breathe, eat and drink your business until it can stand on its own. Working hard will be easy if you have a vision, clear goals, and are passionate with what you do.

Constantly Look for Ways to Network. In business, you are judged by the company you keep - from your management team, board of directors, and strategic partners. Businesses always need assistance, more so small businesses. Maybe the lady you met in a trade association meeting can help you secure funding, or the gentleman at a conference can provide you with management advise. It is important to form alliances with people who can help you, and whom you can help in return. To succeed in business, you need to possess good networking skills and always be alert to opportunities to expand your contacts.

Willingness to Learn. You do not need to be a MBA degree holder or PhD graduate to succeed in your own business. In fact, there are a lot of entrepreneurs who did not even finish secondary education. Studies show that most self-made millionaires have average intelligence. Nonetheless, these people reached their full potentials achieved their financial and personal goals in business because they are willing to learn. To succeed, you must be willing to ask questions, remain curious, interested and open to new knowledge. This willingness to learn becomes more crucial given the rapid changes in technologies and ways of doing business.

Persevere and have faith. No one said that the road to success is easy. Despite your good intentions and hard work, sometimes you will fail. Some successful entrepreneurs suffered setbacks and resounding defeats, even bankruptcy, yet managed to quickly stand up to make it big in their fields. Your courage to persist in the face of adversity and ability to bounce back after a temporary disappointment will assure your success. You must learn to pick yourself up and start all over again. Your persistence is the measure of the belief in yourself. Remember, if you persevere, nothing can stop you.

Discipline yourself. Thomas Huxley once said, Do what you should do, when you should do it, whether you like it or not. Self-discipline is the key to success. The strength of will to force yourself to pay the price of success - doing what others don t like to do, going the extra mile, fighting and winning the lonely battle with yourself.

ISKO MORENO (Success Story)

2007-09-07T19:56:00.000-07:00

Entertainment Former youth entertainer Isko Moreno is a pure example of extreme poverty to success.

Indeed, skinny Francisco Damacosog, who lived and breathed hunger and pain since his early childhood in one of the toughest sides of Tondo, rose from being a dance and sing "That's Entertainment" teenage talent of German Moreno to become Manila's vice-mayor in his late '20s.

He was discovered by a talent manager who saw a handsome kid beyond the dirt and difficult circumstances that surrounded him.

His discoverer brought him to TV host-actor Kuya Germs who took Isko under his wings and opened the wonderful world of showbusiness to his eyes.

But Isko was not so successful in the youth-oriented TV program and was not given the opportunity for marked roles that would pave way to stardom.

Having saved a little to make himself and his family comfortable, Isko thought of going back to school in the '80s because showbiz is not a lifetime career.

He started in politics as a Manila councilor --learning the ropes of the trade in a hard way. Having had difficulties expresssing himself in English, Isko often suffered humiliation and embarrassment whenever his critics ganged up on him in the session hall. His colleagues could see nothing extra-ordinary in the youthful, good-looking boy who was once featured near-naked in a poster.

But no amount of cruelties could stop him as he went on to finish college with a public administration major at the Pamantasan ng Lunsod ng Maynila while serving as an alderman.

Now, he is a sophomore law student at the University of the Philippines where he hopes to learn more about good governance and law administration.

One can now notice the absence of sheepishness in him as he has become eloquent in expressing his ideas --courtesy of his diligence and continuous learning process.

Going back to his childhood years, Isko remembers going about the big waste bins of McDonald's near his residence and rummaging for old food stuff like chicken bones and leftovers to be cooked for his poor family.

Movie reporter Morly Alino recalls seeing the child picking up spoiled food and bones to be washed and cooked again for their meals.

"Ay, we would sometimes meet each other between Tuazon and Kagitingan streets where Isko was always watchful of the McDonald's leftover garbage. Such an industrious and easy to get along fellow despite his youth," said Alino.

Veteran reporter-radio personality Tita Swarding also has nothing but good words for Isko.

"When Daddy Wowie wanted to hide Isko's extreme poverty, I advised him not to do that. I know the public will only love the youngster more if they know the truth about him since they will be able to identify themselves with a downtrodden being," said Tita Swarding. "I'm glad he took my words to heart."

How did Isko win against his heavyweight opponents in this year's vice mayoral race?

"I am a sincere man. I have no money. All I had was the people's trust and belief that I would do something good for the city when I make it to the top. I and my mayoral candidate, Danny Lacuna didn't have much financial or logistic resources except our clean records and the love of our constituents," he said.

He recalled going to campaign gatherings or house-to-house meetings and announcing, "Please lend me your votes in this election and I promise to serve you with my best effort if you give me the job."

"That's a promise I will deliver, I will not fail them who gave me a mandate," said the three-termer councilor who says he has always been active in serving barangays and the community as well.

He said that when he formally takes his seat at the City Hall with landslife winner, Mayor Fred Lim, everyone will be welcome to visit him and tell him their concerns.

Isko said not being a partymate of Mayor Lim is not a problem. "While he is from Pwersang Masa and I am from Kampi, I will fully cooperate with his rules and policies provided they are for the good of the majority."

"I am sure he will listen to what is right. Differences will only occur if he ignores what is true and what is correct". (PNA)

Maid in London returns home a multimillionaire

2007-09-07T19:24:00.000-07:00

CONSUELO VALENCIA (Success Story)
By Emman Cena Inquirer

COME CHRISTIMAS time, Filipino workers around the world are likely packing goods in a box.

Back home, the air is filled with the scent of "Stateside" lotion, soaps, chocolates and the whiff of Americana deliciously trapped inside what have come to be known as balikbayan boxes.

To 59-year old Consuelo Valencia, the concept of the balibayan box inspired her to put up the Farochilen Group of Companies 10 years ago. The business venture eventually earned her millions.

No fairy tale
But the success of Manang Consuelo, as she's fondly called by friends was hardly a fairy tale at the start. It took courage for her to fly to London in May 1977 to work as a domestic helper.

She left her two young sons in the care of her husband who himself was trying to make ends meet.

Armed with the ambition and determination to give her family the best that life can offer, she rose from scrubbing floors to being one of most the most successful Filipino businesswomen in the United Kingdom.

"It was a matter of survival and sacrifice for me and my family," says Manang Consuelo, who arrived last week to spend the holidays with her family.

But the sacrifice eventually paid off. Several newspapers in the UK had carried her story on how a cleaner became a millionaire in 10 years.

How it all began
Her reversal of fortune started in 1986 when after nine years of scrubbing floors in London, Manang Consuelo was offered a job with a freight shipping firm.

"At that time, nobody was doing business with the Philippines," she says, "But I realized there were many people here (UK) who wanted to send parcels to their families."

When the owner of the firm retired, the business was handed down to her. Through her excellent PR skills and her determination to succeed, she managed to bring the company on top of the heap with an ever-growing list of customers.

The company now collects boxes and T chests from individual customers across the United Kingdom. Manang Consuelo says their weekly shipment averages 40 containers shipped door-to-door delivery to the Philippines. This time of the year is the busiest, she says, since the movement of the balikbayan boxes is at its peak.

Also in 1986, Manang Consuelo ventured in a door to door cash delivery service through the Farochilen Remittances.

"With Filipinos in the UK sending money once or twice a month to support their families back home, this is a perfect venture," she says. By offering a reliable face-to-face speedy delivery, high exchange rates and low remittance fees, Manang Consuelo gives the banks a run for their money.

Not content with the success of the remittance and freight business, in 1996 she also embarked on travel services, phone card dealership, real estate, recruitment and publishing house--all of which she never imagined she could ever have.

In just 10 years, the Earls Court-based freight (cargo) company expanded into a wide range of business venture now known as Farochilen Group of Companies, the biggest business of its kind servicing mainly the Filipino community in the UK.

Now its managing director, Manang Consuelo supervises the freight company and its subsidiaries including the widely known travel agency that mainly deals with flights to Asia, Singapore and the Philippines. She now also owns four house-buildings in London.

Tatak Filipino
She also launched Tatak Filipino in October 2002, a mini-supermarket specializing in food stuff imported from the Philippines and the Far East.

Once serving a single household doing household chores, Manang Consuelo, through her chain of businesses, now serves the whole Filipino community in UK.

But serving her fellow Filipinos doesn't end there. She has donated three libraries here in the Philippines, a Catholic chapel and classrooms in Iloilo--her way of giving back, she says.

With an outstanding profile as a business tycoon who rose from poverty, Manang Consuelo has earned for herself accolades here and abroad, recognizing her dedication to work.

She placed 11th in the 100 REAL Women of Achievement in UK in 2004 and also won the Woman into Businesss Awards sponsored by the Bank of Scotland in February 2003.

To date, the rags-to-riches story of Manang Consuelo has attracted various film producers and TV networks. In the UK, a known writer has offered to write about her life while the British Broadcasting Company will soon shoot a documentary film about her.

Manang Consuelo arrived Friday night straight from London to receive her award as one of the outstanding Overseas Filipino Entrepreneurs (OFEs) sponsored by the Philippine Center for Entrepreneurship (PCE). The award was given yesterday by President Arroyo and Presidential Consultant for Entrepreneurship Jose Concepcion III at the "Go Negosyo Para sa mga OFWs at Balikbayans Fair" at Market! Market! Trade Halls A & B in Taguig City.

Go Negosyo awardee
The "Go Negosyo" para sa mga OFWs at Balikbayans is part of the continuing Go Negosyo campaign of PCE, encouraging the further development of entrepreneurship in the country. It also aims to complement the happiness of OFWs getting reunited with their families by exposing them to business opportunities.

The 59-year old is now a multimillionaire. Indeed, 29 years after leaving her family to become a maid in London, Manang Consuelo is literally made.

FERDIE CAPILI (Success Story)

2007-09-07T19:07:00.000-07:00

FERDIE CAPILI almost didn’t make it to Spain. Ferdie was working at the Imperial Hotel in Legazpi City when Lady Luck winked at him. One of the hotel guests, a Saudi Arabian national married to a Filipina nurse, was playing a round of golf. The Saudi guest didn’t like the coffee served and came looking for the F & B Manager to complain. Since the regular F & B Manager was absent, it was Ferdie who faced the guest. As luck would have it, the Saudi guest—who turned out to be the Manager of a Rolls Royce franchise in Saudi Arabia owned by Sheik Mohammed Al-Asmawi—was impressed with how Ferdie resolved the coffee issue. He straightaway offered him a job as personal F & B Manager of the Sheik, reputedly the tenth richest man in the world. Ferdie was to be based in Marbella, Spain.

Ferdie had to take the roundabout route going to Spain. Having been turned down when he applied for a visa, he flew to Morocco to establish the minimum 3-month residency to be eligible for entry to Spain. For three months, he was stuck in Sheik Mohammed’s magnificent villa in Tangiers, incommunicado from his family and unable to roam around. The food and the accommodation were fit for a king but he became so bored that at one time, Ferdie found himself talking to an Arabian horse owned by the Sheik. To this day, Ferdie won't tell what he and the horse discussed.

As the apex of his career in Spain, Ferdie became General Manager of the Marbella Resort Hotel, the first time in Malaga that a Filipino had risen to such a powerful position. After working for nine years for the Sheik in Marbella, he returned to the Philippines and now operates his Our Lady of Manaoag Montessori School system (pre-school, elementary, high school and college), in Balagtas, Bulacan.

“I’m proud to say that my school’s skills assessment standards are even higher than the standards of the industry and that of TESDA,” Ferdie beams. Why a school? As far as I knew, nobody in Ferdie’s family had any experience in running a school.

“I think this is the best way to return to society the many blessings I’ve received,” Ferdie answered my thoughts. “Education is the best way for the poor to improve their lives, and through my scholarship program, I am somehow able to make it happen for them.” Ferdie reminisces about the time when he struggled to make both ends meet as a student in UP. He remembers having to sell kangkong at the market place so he could earn fare money. In addition, he sold carabao milk at the UP Canteen in exchange for snacks. He joined the UP Repertory Company, a theatre group, not only for self-improvement but to earn extra money. He joined balagtasan contests for the same reason. Ferdie has come a long way since his batang kangkungan days, but for him, his humble beginning is a source of pride and inspiration, and he never fails to tell his story to his students.

Mike Bolos (Success Story)

2007-09-06T23:38:00.000-07:00

By Emman Cena
Inquirer

HE could have stayed in the United States where his family is or in the burning deserts of Saudi Arabia to rake in more money. But Mike Bolos opts to stay home and walk the road less-traveled.

“I’ve had enough overseas. Life’s comfort is obviously there but I’d like to get old here,” Mike Bolos tells the Inquirer in an interview.

Turning 53, Bolos obviously had enjoyed the prime of his life toiling 25 years as an accountant and chief financial officer in several companies in Saudi.

He had all the best. But in 2005, he decided to return and settle where, he says, his heart is.

“I’d rather spend whatever earnings I have here,” says Bolos who has put up a spa center in Manila and a commercial building in his hometown, Guagua, Pampanga.

The spa which started in August, 2005 employs 18 women, whom he says could have ended as domestic helpers had they gone abroad.

“They were merely high school graduates but they earn here as much as P20,000 monthly as masseuse,” he adds.

The P60-million, 3-story commercial building, on one hand, is expected to be in full swing this month. It will house various establishments such as a dance studio, an Internet café, a 7-11 convenience store and a modern American-patterned dental clinic run by one of his children.

“The mall type building will be the center of life (in Guagua). This is my way of paying back the people I grew up with. This will be a one-stop shop,” he adds.

Formula for success

But the success of Bolos didn’t happen in the blink of an eye.

“I was good in numbers and they never failed me throughout. But of course, it was sheer determination, hard work and patience,” he says.

His is a classic Cinderella story. He climbed the corporate ladder from being an ordinary Accounting board passer.

It was his brother who was looking for a job abroad but it was Bolos who was given the chance.

At 21, he worked as an accountant in a travel agency in Riyadh where he stayed for two years. He later moved to a health care company, the Gama Services Ltd., where he spent 23 years. He left Gama as corporate assistant comptroller.

At an early age, Mike learned how to juggle work with academics as business administration student at the University of the East.

But the hard times didn’t stop him from dreaming of a brighter life for his family. It was actually one of the goading forces behind his success.

He graduated high school valedictorian which qualified him for a business course at the University of Santo Tomas.

But after a year in UST, he decided to transfer to the University of the East where schedules were more suitable to him as a working student. After graduating and passing the CPA boards, he left the country in 1980.

He also had his own family to miss, being married to a fellow Kapampangan at an early age. “My first two years were miserable because I had no idea of the culture of the place. I was young and was thinking that things are done as they were done in the Philippines.”

But he eventually learned the ropes, he says. He later learned how to throw his hat into the fray, so to speak. He performed well ahead of his co-workers. He started earning good money, was provided free house and car by the company. “Everything was free. A lot of freebies. So my monthly check goes to my family tax-free,” he recalls. In fact, he admits, he was one of the highest paid Filipinos in Saudi at that time.

Children far from me

“Given a chance I would have tried to work out my relationship with my children. They grew up far from me. We’ve gone on our ways,” Bolos says.

Two of his kids are now in the US. Michelle, the eldest has a family of her own while Michael, 20, is studying law in Chicago. The middle child, Madelaine, is helping him run the family business in Guagua.

Business secret

Asked his business secret, Bolos could only say, “There are a lot of opportunities here. But the sad part is that the money that Filipinos work hard for are going to the hands of the rich people, most of them foreigners.”

These days, Bolos says he gets himself busy by doing the rounds of his businesses. He rarely gets rest days. “I don’t even have time to watch TV. I am always in front of my computer. I wake up at 8 a.m. to check e-mails then my day ends at about 3 a.m.”

“Until I get my team in place then I’d finally take a break,” he says. He is currently hiring people to man his commercial center in Guagua. “I’m happy but not content. I have a lot more things that I’ve wanted to do but not for myself though.”

Did he ever think of running for public office? “Yes, I’ve received feedback from some of my town mates. But it’s not really my turf. I’ll help out as a private individual.”

Everything Happens For The Good

2007-08-31T18:48:00.000-07:00

There was once a King who had a wise advisor. The advisor followed the King everywhere, and his favorite advice was, “Everything happens for the good”. One day the King went hunting and had a little accident. He shot an arrow at his own foot and was injured. He asked the advisor what he thought about the accident, to which the advisor replied, “Everything happens for the good”. This time the King was really upset and ordered for his advisor to be put in prison. The King asked his advisor, “Now, what do you think?” The advisor again replied, “Everything happens for the good”. So the advisor remained in prison.

The King later went on a hunting trip, this time without the advisor. The King was then captured by some cannibals. He was taken to the cannibals' camp where he was to be the evening meal for the cannibals. Before putting him into the cooking pot he was thoroughly inspected. The cannibals saw the wound on the King’s foot and decided to throw him back into the jungle. According to the cannibals' tradition, they would not eat anything that was imperfect. As a result the King was spared. The King suddenly realized what his advisor said was true. The advisor also escaped death because had he not been in prison, he would have followed the King on the hunting trip, and would have ended up in the cooking pot.

Success Principles

It is true that everything in life happens for a purpose, and always for our own good. If you think about it, all our past experiences actually happened to bring us to where we are today, and it is always for the good. All the past experiences makes us a better person. So, whatever challenges that we may face today, consider it happening to bring us to the next level.

My Dog Can Walk On Water

2007-08-31T00:26:00.000-07:00

There was a hunter who came into the possession of a special bird dog. The dog was the only one of its kind, because it can walk on water. One day he invited a friend to go hunting with him so that he could show off his prized possession. After some time, they shot a few ducks, which fell into the river. The man ordered his dog to run and fetch the birds. The dog ran on water to fetch the birds. The man was expecting a compliment about the amazing dog, but did not receive it. Being curious, he asked his friend if the friend had noticed anything unusual about the dog. The friend replied, “Yes, I did see something unusual about your dog. Your dog can’t swim!”

Success Principles

More than 90% of the people that we face everyday are negative. They choose to look at the hole in the middle rather than the doughnut. Do not expect compliments or encouragement from them. These are the people who cannot pull you out of your present situation. They can only push you down. So be aware of them, spend less time with them, and do not let them steal your dreams away from you.

A Good Provider Is One Who Leaves

2007-08-30T20:09:00.000-07:00

By JASON DePARLE

On June 25, 1980 (a date he would remember), a good-natured Filipino pool-maintenance man gathered his wife and five children for an upsetting ride to the Manila airport. At 36, Emmet Comodas had lived a hard life without growing hardened, which was a mixed blessing given the indignities of his poverty. Orphaned at 8, raised on the Manila streets where he hawked cigarettes, he had hustled a job at a government sports complex and held it for nearly two decades. On the spectrum of Filipino poverty, that alone marked him as a man of modest fortune. But a monthly salary of $50 did not keep his family fed. Home was a one-room, scrap-wood shanty in a warren of alleys and stinking canals, hidden by the whitewashed walls of an Imelda Marcos beautification campaign. He had borrowed money at usurious rates to start a tiny store, which a thief had plundered. His greatest fears centered on his 11-year-old daughter, Rowena, who had a congenital heart defect that turned her lips blue and fingernails black and who needed care he could not afford. After years of worrying over her frail physique, Emmet dropped to his moldering floor and asked God for a decision: take her or let him have her. God answered in a mysterious way. Not long after, Emmet’s boss offered him a pool-cleaning job in Saudi Arabia. Emmet would make 10 times as much as he made in Manila. He would also live 4,500 miles from his family in an Islamic autocracy where stories of abused laborers were rife. He accepted on the spot. His wife, Tita, was afraid of the slum where she soon would be raising children alone, and she knew that overseas workers often had affairs. She also knew their kids ate better because of the money the workers sent home. She spent her last few pesos for admission to an airport lounge where she could wave at the vanishing jet, then went home to cry and wait. Two years later, on Aug. 2, 1982 (another date he would remember), Emmet walked off the returning flight with chocolate for the kids, earrings for Tita and a bag of duty-free cigarettes, his loneliness abroad having made him a chain smoker. His 2-year-old son, Boyet, considered him a stranger and cried at his touch, though as Emmet later said, “I was too happy to be sad.” He gave himself a party, replaced the shanty’s rotted walls and put on a new roof. Then after three months at home, he left for Saudi Arabia again. And again. And again and again: by the time Emmet ended the cycle and came home for good, he had been gone for nearly two decades. Boyet was grown. Deprived of their father while sustained by his wages, the Comodas children spent their early lives studying Emmet’s example. Now they have copied it. All five of them, including Rowena, grew up to become overseas workers. Four are still working abroad. And the middle child, Rosalie — a nurse in Abu Dhabi — faces a parallel to her father’s life that she finds all too exact. She has an 18-month-old back in the Philippines who views her as a stranger and resists her touch. What started as Emmet’s act of desperation has become his children’s way of life: leaving in order to live. About 200 million migrants from different countries are scattered across the globe, supporting a population back home that is as big if not bigger. Were these half-billion or so people to constitute a state — migration nation — it would rank as the world’s third-largest. While some migrants go abroad with Ph.D.’s, most travel as Emmet did, with modest skills but fearsome motivation. The risks migrants face are widely known, including the risk of death, but the amounts they secure for their families have just recently come into view. Migrants worldwide sent home an estimated $300 billion last year — nearly three times the world’s foreign-aid budgets combined. These sums — “remittances” — bring Morocco more money than tourism does. They bring Sri Lanka more money than tea does. The numbers, which have doubled in the past five years, have riveted the attention of development experts who once paid them little mind. One study after another has examined how private money, in the form of remittances, might serve the public good. A growing number of economists see migrants, and the money they send home, as a part of the solution to global poverty. Yet competing with the literature of gain is a parallel literature of loss. About half the world’s migrants are women, many of whom care for children abroad while leaving their own children home. “Your loved ones across that ocean . . . ,” Nadine Sarreal, a Filipina poet in Singapore, warns: Will sit at breakfast and try not to gaze Where you would sit at the table. Meals now divided by five Instead of six, don’t feed an emptiness. Earlier waves of globalization, the movement of money and goods, were shaped by mediating institutions and protocols. The International Monetary Fund regulates finance. The World Trade Organization regularizes trade. The movement of people — the most intimate form of globalization — is the one with the fewest rules. There is no “World Migration Organization” to monitor the migrants’ fate. A Kurd gaining asylum in Sweden can have his children taught school in their mother tongue, while a Filipino bringing a Bible into Riyadh risks being expelled. The growth in migration has roiled the West, but demographic logic suggests it will only continue. Aging industrial economies need workers. People in poor countries need jobs. Transportation and communication have made moving easier. And the potential economic gains are at record highs. A Central American laborer who moves to the United States can expect to multiply his earnings about six times after adjusting for the higher cost of living. That is a pay raise about twice as large as the one that propelled the last great wave of immigration a century ago. With about one Filipino worker in seven abroad at any given time, migration is to the Philippines what cars once were to Detroit: its civil religion. A million Overseas Filipino Workers — O.F.W.’s — left last year, enough to fill six 747s a day. Nearly half the country’s 10-to-12-year-olds say they have thought about whether to go. Television novellas plumb the migrants’ loneliness. Politicians court their votes. Real estate salesmen bury them in condominium brochures. Drive by the Central Bank during the holiday season, and you will find a high-rise graph of the year’s remittances strung up in Christmas lights. Across the archipelago, stories of rags to riches compete with stories of rags to rags. New malls define the landscape; so do left-behind kids. Gain and loss are so thoroughly joined that the logo of the migrant welfare agency shows the sun doing battle with the rain. Local idiom stresses the uncertainty of the migrant’s lot. An O.F.W. does not say he is off to make his fortune. He says, “I am going to try my luck.” A kilometer of crimson stretched across the Manila airport, awaiting a planeload of returning workers and the president who would greet them. The V.I.P. lounge hummed with marketing schemes aimed at migrants and their families. Globe Telecom had got its name on the security guards’ vests. A Microsoft rep had flown in from the States with a prototype of an Internet phone. An executive from Philam Insurance noted that overseas workers buy one of every five new policies. Sirens disrupted the finger food, and a motorcade delivered the diminutive head of state, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who once a year offers rice cakes and red carpet to those she calls “modern heroes.” Bleary from the eight-hour flight, a few hundred workers from Abu Dhabi swapped puzzled looks for presidential handshakes on their way to baggage claim. Roderick de Guzman, a young car porter, took home the day’s grand prize, a “livelihood package” that included a jeepney, life insurance, $1,000 and a karaoke machine. Too dazed to smile, he held an oversize sweepstakes check while the prize’s sponsors and the president beamed at his side and a squad of news photographers fired away. When it comes to O.F.W.’s, politics and business speak with one voice. Message: We Care. On the way to the photo op, I squeezed into an elevator beside Arroyo. A president and daughter of a president, she is a seasoned pol who attended Georgetown University (Bill Clinton was a classmate) and has a Ph.D. in economics. I asked why she called migrant workers “heroes” and gathered from her impatient look that it was all she could do to keep from saying “du-uh.” “They send home more than a billion dollars a month,” she said. “O.F.W.’s get V.I.P. Treatment, Treats,” reported the next day’s Philippine Daily Inquirer, which runs nearly 600 O.F.W. articles a year. Half have the fevered tone of a gold-rush ad. Half sound like human rights complaints. “Deployment of O.F.W.’s Hits 1-M Mark.” “Remittances Seen to Set New Record.” “Happy Days Here Again for Real Estate Sector.” “5 Dead O.F.W.’s in Saudi.” “O.F.W. 18th Pinay Rape Victim in Kuwait.” “We Slept With Dog, Ate Leftovers for $200/month.” Nearly 10 percent of the country’s 89 million people live abroad. About 3.6 million are O.F.W.’s — contract workers. Another 3.2 million have migrated permanently, largely to the United States — and 1.3 million more are thought to be overseas illegally. (American visas, which are probably the hardest to get, are also the most coveted, both for the prosperity they promise and because the Philippines, a former colony, retains an unrequited fascination with the U.S.) There are a million O.F.W.’s in Saudi Arabia alone, followed by Japan, Hong Kong, the United Arab Emirates and Taiwan. Yet with workers in at least 170 countries, the O.F.W.’s are literally everywhere, including the high seas. About a quarter of the world’s seafarers come from the Philippines. The Greek word for maid is Filipineza. The “modern heroes” send home $15 billion a year, a seventh of the country’s gross domestic product. Addressing a Manila audience, Rick Warren, the evangelist, called Filipino guest workers the Josephs of their day — toiling in the homes of modern Pharaohs to liberate their people. For the sheer visuals of the O.F.W. boom, consider Pulong Anahao, a village two hours south of Manila that has been sending Filipinezas to Italy for 30 years. Cement block is the regional style, but these streets boast — the only verb that will do — faux Italianate villas. For the social complexity, turn on “Dahil sa Iyong Paglisan” (“Because You Left”), a Tagalog telenovela. Each show explores a familiar type. “Dodgie,” a driver in Dubai, is livid at his wife’s profligacy. “Dennis” gets fleeced by crooked recruiters on his way to Singapore. “Carlos,” with a wife in Riyadh, is a hapless househusband; he cannot cook or wash, and his son is left out in the rain. Manila Hospital was aflutter one morning with the taping of the episode about “Wally.” A seafarer home from Greece, he demanded to know where his money had gone, only to discover that his pregnant wife had spent it on antiviral medication. His port-of-call promiscuity had given her H.I.V. “Qui-et!” the director bellowed, with Wally about to learn of his own infection. It took the actor five takes to summon a sufficiently chilling mix of fear and remorse. A giggly nursing student, fresh from a cameo, paused to chat. She was getting a degree to — what else? — “go abroad and try my luck.” While the Philippines has exported labor for at least 100 years, the modern system took shape three decades ago under Ferdinand Marcos. Clinging to power through martial law, he faced soaring unemployment, a Communist insurgency and growing urban unrest. Exporting idle Filipinos promised a safety valve and a source of foreign exchange. With a 1974 decree (“to facilitate and regulate the movement of workers in conformity with the national interest”), Marcos sent technocrats circling the globe in search of labor contracts. Annual deployments rose more than tenfold in a decade, to 360,000. The “People Power” revolution of 1986 replaced him with Corazon Aquino, who as the widow of his slain rival was a figure as un-Marcosian as they come. But the surge in labor migration continued. By the end of her six-year term, annual deployments had nearly doubled. There is no anti-migration camp in Filipino politics. The labor secretary, Arturo Brion, greeted me by saying that he, too, had been an O.F.W., having worked as a lawyer for seven years in Canada. When I asked how a nationalist candidate might fare with a vow to keep workers home, he looked confused. “Nobody would vote for him,” he said. The political issue is not migration but migrant safety. The formative moment in O.F.W. history, its Alamo, was the 1995 hanging of Flor Contemplacion, a Filipina maid in Singapore. Though she confessed to killing another Filipina maid and a Singaporean child, she did so in an uncertain mental state with weak legal representation; an 11th-hour witness fingered someone else. President Fidel Ramos’s calls for mercy failed, and the martyred maid’s coffin received a hero’s welcome at home. Congressional elections followed, and the new Legislature passed what is variously called Republic Act 8042 and “the migrant workers’ Magna Carta.” It pushed the government’s responsibilities beyond migrant deployment to migrant protection. Woe now to the Filipino pol who appears not to have migrant welfare in mind. After a Filipino truck driver was kidnapped in Iraq in 2004, Arroyo not only banned all contract work there but also withdrew from the American-led military coalition. Even state visits have the tenor of bail runs. The president triumphed in Saudi Arabia last spring when King Adbullah freed more than 400 workers who had been jailed for petty crimes. But the war in Lebanon last summer threw the Arroyo government into a crisis by displacing thousands of Filipina maids. They returned home with harrowing tales of prewar abuse, including beatings and rape, endured in pursuit of salaries that averaged $200 a month. Embarrassed (and seemingly surprised), the government proposed a “Supermaid” program, a short-term training regimen that would lift the maids’ skills and demand a doubling of their wage. Those not cringing at the name fretted that a pay raise would leave the maids displaced by Bangladeshis. While every country’s migrants face risks, what makes the Philippines unique is a bureaucracy pledged to reduce them. There is no precise analog for the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration — O.W.W.A. — or its savvy director, Marianito Roque, who is one part international rescue worker and one part domestic fixer. A bureaucratic survivor who rose through the ranks, Roque understands the imperative of making the president look good. Christmas offered plenty of opportunity. With legions of workers coming home, Roque staged thank-you fiestas nationwide. I pictured them as sedate affairs until I arrived at a mall in Cebu City. Five thousand people pressed against police barricades, aiming cellphone cameras at a fluttering pop star who urged them to buy her music and clothes. O.W.W.A. has its own chorale, which offered the workers “Lady Marmalade” — “Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?” — an odd choice in a country saturated with fears of overseas adultery. Roque raffled off a mountain of rice cookers and electric fans, and the crowd responded with game-show shrieks. He caught an early-morning flight the next day and stormed through two more fiestas. When the last rice cooker had been claimed and the last voulez-vous belted out, I spotted a man grinning mischievously, as if he were in on his own private joke. An attractive woman hung on his arm with what I mistook as reunion bliss. The bliss, she happily explained, was in the pay. The man, Pepito Montero, boasted that he earned $8,000 a month on a Saudi oil rig, and a flicker of doubt must have crossed my face. His smile broadened at the chance to produce his retort — a mass of $100 bills the size of a tennis ball. Emmet Comodas migrated to Manila before he migrated abroad. His parents, tenant farmers in the province of Leyte, died before he finished grade school, and he was handed off to an aunt in the capital, 600 miles away. She lived in a muddy squatters’ camp called Leveriza. The alleys were ruled by drunks and gangs, but Emmet wore his geniality as a shield and was quick to make friends. Drawn to commerce more than to school, which he left at 16, Emmet spent much of his youth dodging traffic to sell newspapers and cigarettes. When he grew weary of his aunt’s strictures, he slept on a city bridge. Among his favorite vending sites was a nearby stadium, Rizal Memorial, though without a sales license he had to sneak in early and hide before events. The canteen manager, admiring his pluck, hired him as a cook. With a bounce in his step from his first real job, Emmet was walking home to Leveriza one day when he spotted a woman, beautiful but frail, in an alley ironing clothes. He was afraid to say hello. Teresita Portagana came from a higher echelon of the Filipino poor. Her father was a farmhand in nearby Cavite province who managed to buy a few acres of coffee trees. Tita was raised on the farm, the oldest of 11 kids in a close-knit family who shared a single thatched hut. She left school after sixth grade to help her mother manage the growing clan, and when she turned 16 her father sent her to work in a Manila glove factory. She would live with an aunt and send home most of her pay. Her excitement at the prospect of city living vanished when she saw her aunt’s neighborhood. Leveriza was not just crowded and dangerous; it stank. Stagnant estuaries, which doubled as sewage pits, were filled with discarded bundles of waste dubbed “flying saucers.” When her father learned that Tita was drawing looks from Leveriza boys, he hurried to Manila and moved her out. “One relative in Leveriza is enough,” he said. By then Emmet was pressing his case. Tita considered him plain-looking and “poor as a rat,” but his persistence carried the day. They married on the farm and moved back to Leveriza, where Emmet would be close to work. He was 23, and she had just turned 21. Similar slums were spreading across the developing world, greeting provincial migrants with welcome mats of squalor. How people survived, and at what cost, was a mystery and a concern. As Tita and Emmet were settling in, F. Landa Jocano, an anthropologist trained at the University of Chicago, moved nearby in search of answers, which eventually formed a noted book, “Slum as a Way of Life.” The setting of his Leveriza-like camp was predictably grim — “wet and muddy,” with a “nauseating smell” and “cardboard hovels” holding six to nine people to the room. But what really stood out were the social conflicts. Despite the Filipinos’ reputation for prizing social accord, husbands beat wives, gangs murdered gangs and tsismis — gossip — was a constant preoccupation. “Envy, jealousy, hatred and other forms of ridicule” coursed through the alleys, and it took a special deftness to thrive. Tita, lacking it, withdrew into herself. “I was talkless,” she said. Tita and Emmet had three children in four years, and two more later. Their second child. Rowena, was born seven weeks early with a heart defect that went undiagnosed for years. All they knew was that she was constantly sick. The family lived in rented shanties until Emmet won $90 on a horse race and bought a shanty of his own. It was so bug-infested that he burned the walls and rebuilt with secondhand wood. He moved to a pool-cleaning job at the stadium and sold cigarettes on the side. Still, the holes in the roof meant the children got wet on rainy nights. When she lacked money for vegetables or fish, Tita served the children rice, and when she lacked enough rice for three meals, she served two. A Sikh they called the “boom-bay” lent money at the standard interest rate, 20 percent per month. Emmet borrowed about $130 to open a tiny grocery store, which he planned to run as a sideline with Tita’s help. The thief who robbed it during Holy Week seemed to know that they were busy with a marathon reading of the “Pasyon,” a 24-hour life of Christ. A few months later, Tita became pregnant with their fifth child. By then the Marcos labor decree was five years old, and the machinery was humming. Saudi Arabia was modernizing overnight. It needed roads, schools, apartments, hospitals and laborers to build them. Filipinos worked hard, spoke English and took orders. Tita and Emmet had seen the workers coming home with the Look — leather jackets, Ray-Bans and enough gold around their necks to turn their skin yellow with a case of Saudi “hepa.” But most of the jobs were controlled by recruiting agencies, which charged placement fees of a month’s salary or more. Only the privileged among the poor could leave. In the spring of 1980, Tita’s brother Fortz took a loan from his father to try his luck in Riyadh. He had just landed when Emmet’s boss asked if he wanted to do the same pool-cleaning work in Dhahran. “Yes, yes, yes,” Emmet said. The firm that managed the stadium had a contract there, so there were no recruiters’ fees. Tita’s brother Fering came the following year, and soon after, her brother Servando. Of the 11 siblings in her generation, nine either became overseas workers or married one. “First timers” have it rough. Emmet shared a comfortable company apartment and a cook with three other Filipinos, but the loneliness was worse than anything he had known. Outside of work, there was nothing to do. Alcohol and churches were banned. Looking the wrong way at a Saudi woman was an invitation to arrest. (That is one theory behind the Ray-Bans.) Emmet paced Dhahran malls and stared at Dhahran skies, fantasizing that the planes overhead had come to take him home. Tita’s loneliness was costly, too, but she had Emmet’s earnings. With a monthly salary of $500, he made as much in two years in Dhahran as he did in two decades in Manila, and he sent two-thirds of it home. Tita bought better food, and she bought Rowena medicine. She bought each child a second school uniform, so she would not have to wash every night. She bought an electric fan and a television — her habit of watching through a neighbor’s window was a source of alleyway discord. Emmet, who talked to the family on cassette tapes, surprised Tita by sending one with a $100 bill inside. When Emmet got home in 1982, he gave himself a party, patched the walls and replaced the leaky roof. Then he signed another two-year contract. After his second tour, he replaced the wooden walls with cement block and added an upstairs. After his third contract, he paid the government $2,000 and got title to the land. Though neither Tita nor Emmet finished high school, all five children started college; four got degrees. Emmet, overseas paying the bills, missed every graduation. It takes a lot to move him to anger, but even now he gets furious when someone says that overseas workers leave their children to grow up without love. “You cannot look at each other and say it’s love if your stomach is empty,” he said. “I sacrificed!” I first met Tita and the kids in 1987, as Emmet was finishing his third contract. I had a fellowship from the Henry Luce Foundation to study urban poverty; a Leveriza nun, Sister Christine Tan, introduced us, and Tita agreed to let me move in. With Cory Aquino finishing her first year, the country was in transition, and Tita was, too. She was no longer quite so talkless. I awoke in the mornings to the blare of Tagalog news radio and once found her studying an English newspaper with a dual-language dictionary. “What’s imperialism?” she asked. When Congress wanted a witness for a hearing on urban poverty, Sister Christine had Tita testify. Tita told me she had been asking God, “Why are so many Filipinos poor?” When I asked if God had answered, she laughed. “Not yet,” she said. Much of the credit belonged to Sister Christine, who had organized a network of prayer groups and cooperative stores and groomed Tita as a lieutenant. Tita bought and distributed 2,000 eggs a week for the group’s co-op stores, placing them under a fluorescent light at night to keep the rats away. The unpaid work, undertaken in the spirit of community service, brought Tita new confidence. But so perhaps did the modest comforts made possible by Emmet’s wages. By now she had a toilet. Her oldest two children spent less time mulling the meaning of life — Rowena, still poised between sickness and health, was addicted to celebrity gossip — and her two youngest were little boys. But Rosalie, the middle child, was on a quest. At 16, she was ambitious, sometimes brooding, beautiful and devout; while her sister squealed about movie stars, Rosalie wrote Tagalog plays about class conflict. One depicted Imelda Marcos conniving to raze Leveriza and put up a discothÃ¨que. Emmet returned a few months into my off-and-on stay. He had missed half the life of his 11-year-old, Roldan, and nearly the whole life of the 7-year-old, Boyet. He wanted to stay. With jobs scarce, frustration rose all around. Emmet scolded Tita for running up the light bill with her stewardship of the eggs. Tita got angry when she heard Emmet urge their oldest child, Rolando, to join the U.S. Navy, and furious when she caught him encouraging Rosalie to go abroad. Emmet wanted her to be an O.F.W.; Tita wanted her to be a nun. Though Emmet found a temporary job, he was back in Riyadh within a year. One day he opened the door to find his son Rolando on the steps. He had quit tech school to try his luck as a driver for a Saudi family. His luck proved mediocre. The salary was low, his hours were long and his secret courtship of a Filipina maid could have landed him in jail. He quit after his second contract. By then, Rosalie had finished nursing school in Manila, a milestone for the family. She had set her sights on a job in the United States, but narrowly failed the licensing exam. Four years after graduation, she still earned $100 a month. Saudi hospitals paid nearly four times as much. After borrowing the recruiters’ fee from an aunt, Rosalie was Jeddah bound. No one fully understood that a baton was being passed. With the kids grown, Tita soon rented out the house in Leveriza and started building another on her share of the family farm. At 55, Emmet had given his prime years, nearly 20 of them, to a succession of Arabian pools. Rosalie, renewing her contract, insisted he go home. The responsibility of supporting the family was hers. As an Islamic state that bans socializing between unmarried women and men, Saudi Arabia held out few hopes for marriage or kids. Rosalie approached her 30th birthday resigned to a dutiful life alone. She celebrated at a Jeddah restaurant with Filipino friends; one of them, knowing they had a private room, disregarded the gender rules by bringing along her nephew, a construction engineer. The nephew, Christopher Villanueva, took Rosalie for an after-dinner walk, trailing her by a few paces in case the religious police happened by. “I was trembling!” Rosalie said. With both of them living in guarded single-sex dorms, their 18-month courtship occurred largely by cellphone. When they flew home in 2002 to marry, they had never been alone. In the Philippines the following year to deliver her first baby, Rosalie saw an ad seeking nurses in Abu Dhabi. At $1,100 a month, the job paid twice what she made in Jeddah, and Abu Dhabi had no religious police. She aced the test and caught another plane to the Middle East, this time as a mother. Christine — “Tin-Tin” — was 7 months old when Rosalie tore herself away. The baby stayed on the farm and soon called her Aunt Rowena “Mama.” When a second daughter, Precious Lara, followed, she considered Rowena her mama, too. The girls cried when Rosalie held them on visits, filling her with worry and regret. Overseas prosperity is a gift and an obligation. “Everyone needs help, and you cannot say no,” said Rosalie, who seems not to mind. She paid to complete her parents’ new house and sends them $400 a month. She sent money for her cousins’ school supplies and helped her uncle buy a cow. She lent hundreds of dollars to godparents, knowing she would never be repaid. Migration operates like compound interest, building upon itself. Capitalizing on permissive visa laws, Rosalie has now brought a cousin and three siblings to Abu Dhabi. Rowena will soon start a secretarial job, and Roldan and Boyet are working with computers. Rosalie has also gotten Tin-Tin back, though not without some continuing distress: the girl, now 4, still treats Rowena like her real mom. Already the family benefactor, Rosalie recently got a big promotion. As a charge nurse at the Al Rahba Hospital, she now earns $2,000 a month — 20 times what she earned a decade ago when she left the Philippines. Plus she has free health care and housing. Nonetheless, she is determined to stamp one more visa on the passport page. After a decade of trying, she has passed the American nursing exam and will soon retake the English test, which she narrowly failed. “The U.S. is the ultimate,” she said. “If you make it to the U.S., there is no place else to go.” Once upon a time — say five years ago — remittances were considered small potatoes, and possibly rotten ones. Experts saw them as minor amounts, “wasted” on consumption, and to the extent they came from professionals, as reminders of brain drain. That began to change early this decade, when research by the Inter-American Development Bank (commissioned by a remittance enthusiast named Don Terry) showed the amounts in Latin America were three or four times higher than supposed. That work got people talking, but interest surged in 2003 when Dilip Ratha of the World Bank showed the eye-popping sums extended across the globe. Migration has been a prominent development topic ever since. Of the $300 billion that migrants sent home last year, about two-thirds came through formal channels like banks, while the rest is thought to have traveled informally, in pockets or cassette tapes. By contrast, the world spent $104 billion on foreign aid. While the doubling of formal remittances in the past five years partly reflects improved counting, Dilip Ratha argues that most of the gain is real. There are more migrants; their earnings are growing; and plunging transaction fees encourage them to send more money home. The Philippines, which received $15 billion in formal remittances in 2006, ranked fourth among developing countries behind India ($25 billion), China ($24 billion) and Mexico ($24 billion) — all of which are much larger. In no other sizable country do remittances loom as large as a share of the economy. Remittances make up 3 percent of the G.D.P. in Mexico but 14 percent in the Philippines. In 22 countries, remittances exceed a tenth of the G.D.P., including Moldova (32 percent), Haiti (23 percent) and Lebanon (22 percent). Despite fears that the money goes to waste, a growing literature shows positive effects. Remittances cut the poverty rate by 11 percent in Uganda and 6 percent in Bangladesh, according to studies cited by the World Bank, and raised education levels in El Salvador and the Philippines. Being private, the money is less susceptible to corruption than foreign aid; it is also better aimed at the needy and “countercyclical” — it rises in response to slumps and natural disasters. By increasing reserves of foreign exchange, remittances reduce government borrowing costs, saving the Philippines about half a billion dollars in interest each year. While 80 percent of the money sent to Latin America is spent on consumption, that leaves nearly $12 billion for investment. And consumption among the poor is hardly a bad thing. The downside is the risk of dependency, among individuals waiting for a check or for rulers (like Marcos) who use the money to avoid economic reforms. The cash could have a stultifying effect, like the “curse” of too much oil. No country has escaped poverty with remittances alone. “Remittances can’t solve structural problems,” said Kathleen Newland of the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington research group. “Remittances can’t compensate for corrupt governments, nepotism, incompetence or communal conflict. People have finally figured out that remittances are important, but they haven’t figured out what to do about it.” Drawing boards are filled with schemes to leverage the money for development, in ways large and small. A small Manila nonprofit group, the Economic Resource Center for Overseas Filipinos, has a plan to get overseas workers to buy cows; a dairy farm in the Philippines would raise them, splitting the profits and creating jobs. More grandly, commercial banks in Turkey and Brazil have used the expected flow of future remittances as a form of collateral to issue billions in corporate bonds. This lowers the banks’ borrowing costs and increases the amounts they can lend, making it easier, in theory at least, for businesses to borrow and expand. A goal atop everyone’s list is getting more families “banked.” Opening an account (as opposed to just wiring money) lets migrants establish credit histories for future mortgages or business loans. The deposits expand capital pools. And bank accounts boost savings rates. Some banks turn migrant deposits into tiny loans to village entrepreneurs, linking remittances to the popular realm of microfinance. Migrants contribute to development in ways that go beyond remittances. Many countries tap their diasporas for philanthropy. Affluent migrants make investments back home. And the increasingly circular nature of migration means that some migrants return with knowledge and connections. This is a countertrend to brain drain — “brain gain” — with Taiwan the most obvious case. The Hsinchu Science-Based Industrial Park, a government-subsidized Silicon Valley, has lured home thousands of skilled Taiwanese with research and investment opportunities. The key is having something to lure them to; brain gain has not come to, say, Malawi. Casting migration as the answer to global poverty has some people alarmed. It risks obscuring the personal price that migrants and their families pay. It could be used to gloss over, or even justify, the exploitation of workers. And it could offer rich countries an excuse for cutting foreign aid and other development efforts. “This is a new version of trickledown theory,” warned Stephen Castles of Oxford University at a recent conference in Mexico City. “It wants to make the poor pay for development.” Rodolfo GarcÃa Zamora, a professor at the Autonomous University of Zacatecas in Mexico, warned the conference against remittance “fetishization.” Even in the remittance-happy Philippines, national law states that the government does not see migration as a development strategy — though it obviously does. Certainly, soaring remittance tallies cannot measure social costs, to migrants or to those left behind. (So many Africans die at sea each year trying to reach European soil that the Straits of Gibraltar have been dubbed “the largest mass grave in Europe.”) I was with Emmet and his brother-in-law one day when they broke into a nostalgic version of “It’s So Painful, Big Brother Eddie,” a Tagalog classic from the 1980s that immortalizes every migrant’s fear: My child wrote to me I was shocked and I instantly cried. “Father come home, make it fast Mother has another man She’s cheating on you, father. . . .” But what’s painful, I’m wondering Why our two children are now three? Among the biggest worries, in the Philippines and beyond, are the “left behind” kids, who are alternately portrayed as dangerous hoodlums and consumerist brats. Some people fear that their gadgets and clothes, sent from guilty parents abroad, corrupt village values. A U.N. envoy, examining Filipino migration, had a different concern: “Reportedly children of O.F.W.’s are more likely to become involved in delinquency or early marriage.” (Note “reportedly.”) One episode of “Because You Left,” the television show, depicts an adolescent boy whose father is abroad, leaving no one to help him with his first crush. He bonds with the school bully, steals from his mother and tries to rob someone. In addition to the “left behind,” researchers speak of a more disadvantaged class — the “left out.” Lacking the money or connections to go abroad, they are marooned on the wrong shore of what is, among the poor themselves, a growing divide. Fear about the children is inevitable (and laudable), but the modest social science that exists offers some reassurance. At least three studies have examined “left behind” families in the Philippines. All found the children of migrants doing as well as, or better than, children whose parents stayed home. The most recent, from the Scalabrini Migration Center in Manila, involved a national survey of 10-to-12-year-olds. The migrants’ kids did better in school, had better physical health, experienced less anxiety and were more likely to attend church. “For now, the children are fine,” it concluded. Joseph Chamie, editor of The International Migration Review, an academic journal, calls the finding typical. “There’s not much scientific evidence that children have developmental difficulties when a parent migrates,” he said. One theory is that remittances compensate for the missing parent’s care. The study found migrants’ kids taller and heavier than their counterparts, suggesting higher caloric intake, and much more likely to attend private school. The extended family can also act as a compensating force. And so can modern technology in an age of cellphones and Webcams. There is no doubt that migration has costs. “We don’t have a focus group without people crying,” said the Scalabrini researcher, Maruja Asis. The point is that not migrating has costs, too — the cost of wrenching poverty. The Philippines, more than most places, claims to be skilled in managing these costs. As the rare bureaucracy devoted to migrant care, the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration draws admirers from across the globe. Any agency pledged to tame a force as brutal as labor migration is bound to have its failures. O.W.W.A. has 300 employees to watch over 3.6 million workers. The general Filipino view is that the agency does a serviceable job during crises abroad (it evacuated 30,000 workers from Kuwait during the first gulf war), while playing politics at home — investing funds in cronies’ businesses and helping politicians get out the vote. But there is an especially sordid chapter of migrant history that this forgiving account omits, the shipment of bar girls to Japan. Spotting a growth market a decade ago, Philippine recruiters marched armies of young Filipinas through short courses in song and dance, then sent them off to Japanese clubs, with the Philippine government certifying them as “overseas performing artists.” Club owners typically grabbed their passports and told them to do what it took to keep customers drinking; what it took was a mix of tableside affection, off-duty dating and outright prostitution. As both governments lent a hand, Filipinas in skimpy clothes became an export commodity. Their numbers rose from 17,000 in 1996 to more than 70,000 in 2004, as remittances from Japan hit more than $350 million. Sex work is often a byproduct of extreme poverty. “A man is on top of me,” writes Corazon Amaya-CaÃ±ete, a Filipina poet in Hong Kong, in the voice of a woman who distracts herself by resurrecting a childhood habit of counting sheep. In exchange for this is money for Mother’s medicine Building the house and Buying food for my six siblings Clothes, shoes, books and tuition for school . . . Seventy-seven white sheep! Seventy-seven white sheep! The Tagalog wordplay emphasizes the cruelty of her fate: she starts life as a girl counting tupa and awakens to find herself a puta. “Oh! I am prostitute!” she screams. (The poem, “Seventy-Seven White Sheep,” was published in a Webzine of Filipino diaspora writings, Our Own Voice.) It was not the Philippines but Japan that finally cleaned things up. It acted only after the U.S. State Department placed it on a 2004 watch list of countries lax toward human trafficking. The embarrassed Japanese now demand two years of performing experience for an entertainer’s visa, which has cut the flow of Filipina bodies by about 95 percent. Remarkably, it did so over the objection of the Philippine government, which sent a protest delegation to Tokyo. Or perhaps it is less remarkable than it seems. A handful of advocates condemned the flesh trade, but most Filipinos see it as a consensual, if regrettable, economic exchange, and inevitable in a country where nearly half the population lives on less than $2 a day. Gina gawa ko dahil para sa familya ko goes the Tagalog saying. “I do this for the sake of my family.” I asked Nito Roque, the country’s chief migrant protector, how to square the sex trade with the government’s pledge (in Act 8042) to protect workers’ “dignity and fundamental human rights.” His answer says something about the limits of migrant protection, in the Philippines and beyond. “The contract does not say anything about prostitution — that is a private matter between the employer and the employee,” he said. “Nobody forces anybody to go abroad. It’s the applicant who comes forward and applies for the job. “Do they know what they’re getting into? I think so.” About 30 miles south of Manila, just outside the town of Silang, a dirt road ends at a residential compound carved from a small coffee farm. For decades it held nothing but the thatched hut where Tita and her 10 siblings were raised. Now a dozen cement blockhouses are clustered in a U, some little more than shells and others, like Tita and Emmet’s pink cottage, boasting faux marble tile and lace curtains. One look at each home yields a fair guess of how long the owner worked abroad. Nine families in the compound sent workers overseas, and collectively those workers stayed for 131 years (and counting). A walk across the compound cuts through a century of rewards and regrets. Tita’s brother Fering is thankful that he returned from Saudi Arabia in time to see his children’s first days of school. Another brother, Fortz, is one of two men in the family (by some counts, three) whose extramarital affairs overseas produced kids. He left for Saudi Arabia with a daughter named Sheryl and returned with another named Sheralyn. Conscripted as a stand-in mom, Tita raised the girl for 10 years — resentfully at first, because of the cost — and wept when her real mother took her away. “She is like having another child,” she said. Tita’s sister Peachy learned that her husband had a girlfriend — and a son — when she received a package meant for them. The first time I asked her whether the time apart had strained their marriage, she politely lied. “No — we’re loving each other for ever and ever!” she said. The following day she sought me out with a more candid account. Peachy is a large, cheerful woman, who seems as if nothing could daunt her. “I almost died,” she said. “I couldn’t lose my husband to someone else. That was the saddest moment of my life.” Peachy’s sister Patricia thought all was well until a stranger called two years ago and said her husband was having an affair with his wife. “Your husband and his mistress,” the man wrote on the photograph that followed. When Patricia called her husband in Saudi Arabia, he denied all and then stopped taking her calls. He sends little money, and she suspects he has a new child. Their son Jonvic, a dimpled 9-year-old, renders judgments of his father with innocent cheer. “What he did to us was worse than if he died, because he violated the Ten Commandments of God,” he said. It was not infidelity that moved another relative to tears but fidelity at any cost. We were breezing through the family photo album when she pointed at a picture from Saudi Arabia that showed her husband at an evangelical church. Church? That is a ticket to deportation or worse. Alarmed that her slip might place him in greater dangers, she started to sob. “I can’t stop him — that’s where he found his happiness,” she said. When I reached him, he encouraged me to mention his preaching, saying it was his way of thanking God for the chance to work abroad. “I promised the Lord I’ll share the Gospel under any circumstance,” he said. The nine families of overseas workers raised 35 kids, some of whom scarcely saw their fathers. Their combined stories could fill a whole season of “Because You Left.” One became pregnant at 17 and is now a single mother. Another became addicted to video games and dropped out of school. Yet another started drinking after his father disappeared. One of Tita’s sisters sold a house and a cow to place her son in a Taiwan factory. The son squandered his parents’ life savings within a few months, and his drinking and gambling got him expelled from the country. By any measure, the price was high, yet there it stands — a semicircle of blockhouses where there once was a mere thatched hut. Bookshelves sag with encyclopedia sets. More diplomas appear each year on freshly plastered walls. There are bunk beds and Bugs Bunny sheets, cellphones, stereos and big televisions. Having nearly lost her marriage to labor migration, Peachy is scarcely heedless of its social costs. “A good provider is someone who leaves,” she said, without ambivalence. One irritant of life in the compound has been the shared well, which dries up and causes contentious waits. Three of the families have drilled wells of their own, with electric pumps. One belongs to Peachy, a gift from her daughter, Ariane, who used her father’s overseas earnings to get a degree in hotel management and earns $1,000 a month as a maid on a cruise ship. Another tank belongs to Tita and Emmet, whose cottage is the compound’s jewel. It has a patio, a beamed ceiling, a tiled sala floor, two kitchens and two toilets that flush. It was built by Rosalie and is a monument to the tenacious child who wrote plays about the rich exploiting the poor and willed her way into the nascent middle class. Although she is thousands of miles away in Abu Dhabi, she hovers over the compound; no household there is heedless of her example or generosity. The house is nicer than any that Tita and Emmet have known but quieter too, with four of the couple’s five children a continent away. “I am sad,” Tita said, “because they’re in a far place.” She is often weak with ulcers, and Emmet’s hearing has started to fade. They had a chance to sell the fixed-up house in Leveriza for a princely sum, $16,000, but unwilling to part with the place where their children were raised, they rent it to relatives. Restless without work, Emmet is especially susceptible to nostalgia for the bad old days. “I was happier then because I was with my children,” he said. Going abroad is difficult, but so is coming home. Since Emmet returned for good, the kids have noticed less tenderness between their parents and more quarreling. They each grew accustomed to being the boss. One reason Rosalie left her second daughter, Precious Lara, in the Philippines is that she thinks her parents need a child to love. Tita and Emmet sleep beneath a malaria net with the 18-month-old beside them, and Rosalie often calls home two or three times a day. She and her husband have an infant son, Dominique Edward, in Abu Dhabi, whom her parents have never seen. Armed with her first cellphone at 60, Tita has sent so many text messages that she has worn the numbers off the keys. Yawning one night, she laughed and said of herself, “Low batt!” Off the sala is a guest bedroom with a large framed photograph of Rosalie, taken on her wedding day. The woman in that picture shows no trace of a birthright of poverty. She turns to the camera wearing an enormous gown and a confident face. Two generations of labor migration have given her more education, more money and more power and prestige than her mother could have dreamed of on her own wedding day. Precious Lara rarely plays in that room and hardly knows the face, much less the sacrifices her mother has made for the blessings of a migrant’s wage.

Jason DeParle, a senior writer for The Times, last wrote for the magazine about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

MANG GORIO BAHAY KAINAN: A Success Story

2007-08-28T23:16:00.000-07:00

by:Mindanao Economic Development Council (MEDCo)

Precy Villa’s love of good food and cooking drove her family to wear a restaurateur’s hat. Mrs. Villa had started doing business in 1977 where she sold different flavored traditional barbecue (sliced grilled meat) and displayed komiks for rent. Her income was just enough to compensate the needs of her 6 children until it flourished.

The family rented a place where they established their business but instability in the peace and order in the mid 1980s urged the owner to sell the lot where they used to rent so that they were forced to vacate and looked for another suitable location. Her husband was able to buy a lot somewhere in Ortouste Street, Cotabato City where they situated another business. This time a recreation-billiard hall. The income of the family was spent in the renovation of their house.

But Precy’s love for cooking couldn’t stop her. In 1984, she and her children started selling one of her specialties, the “native cassava cake”, which fitted the taste of Cotabateños. Until one regular customer of her barbecue gave them a break. She offered them to manage the PNB Canteen. Her daughter Vilma manned the business. It operated for two years but lack of knowledge in proper accounting lead to the failure of the business.

In 1996, with the initiative of her son Victor and his wife Susan, they opened a small restaurant in front of the Barter Trade at Governor Guttierez Avenue, named “Tsibugan ni Aling Precy”. For sometime the business did not take off quite well. It could be attributed to mismanagement due to the fact that most of them were employed in public and private firms hence couldn’t look after the business operation personally. They had no choice but to leave the management to the workers. Another reason might be that the location is not convenient. So Victor never stopped searching for the perfect spot. Until a family friend informed them of an available place along Sinsuat Avenue formerly leased by the 2nd Wave Corporation to Mr. Leonardo Yap. The said place was located between two leading food establishments in the area namely, Casa Blanca and Las Hermanas. With the concerted efforts of family members, Virgilio, being an electrical technician and Viviencio, a Mechanical Engineer, they worked in the renovation of the building. They did both the carpentry and electrical works. As a result, they were able to minimize their production cost.

18 August 1997, “Lutong Pinoy ni Aling Precy” was founded. They have started to operate the said business with a capital investment of Php 200,000.00. Mother Precy Villa and daughter Vilma took charge of the kitchen. They hired ten (10) workers needed to operate the restaurant and to service the clients. The concept of the business is to offer “pinoy lutong-bahay” type of food as well as serve native delicacies.

During its first year of operation it garnered an average of fifty (50) customers per day coming from all walks of life. They have observed that the customers are fond of chicken, thus they come up with a specialty. Mang Gorio Lechon Manok was introduced to the market and instantly became their primary and most sought-after product. Another added attraction is their unique Buko Halo-Halo (the Boracay style) which made its way to the market. Later, the business thrived and gained recognition for its pinoy and native ambiance.

When the business became stable, the family decided to have its legal identity acquired. After several attempts, the business name was finally approved as “Mang Gorio Bahay Kainan”. The idea came from the name of their father’s brother “Gregorio”. They shorten it with “Gorio” to make it sound more of a filipino.

The business was getting bigger, so the family felt the need to enhance their managerial skills in order to be more effective and competitive considering that more are getting into the restaurant business. In 18 April 1998, spouses Vir and Vilma attended a training seminar entitled “The Restaurant: From Concept to Operation” at the Culinary Arts, Manila. They learned the different strategies in running a restaurant and learned new cooking techniques which they applied upon their return from the training. To further ensure that they run the business in the right path, they seek the government’s assistance and intervention. They actively joined the Cotabato Small and Medium Enterprise Association (CSMEA, Inc.) and attended meetings and trainings conducted by the DTI, both managerial and skills.

The number of customers continued to grow until they felt the need to expand by putting up another branch. In 1999, they acquired a 300 square meter-lot in Almonte Street, where the Mang Gorio Plaza Branch was constructed. This establishment is a stone-throw away from Jollibee. Its total investment is more or less 3,000,000 pesos. It is a two-storey building wherein the first floor is utilized for restaurant operation and the second floor is used for special functions. The restaurant and function room are equipped with 40 tables of 160 seating capacity and is fully air-conditioned. The business is manned by 30 personnel. The said establishment acquired the same design concept which the main has. It was in 28 January 2002 that the Mang Gorio-Plaza Branch was launched.

During the 10th Mindanao Business Conference last September 2001 held here in Cotabato City, Mang Gorio Bahay Kainan was the recipient of the “2nd Prize Winner in Crab Cooking Presentation”. With this recognition, the said restaurant became one of Cotabato City’s pride.

Another milestone reached by the Villas is the establishment Mang Gorio Bahay Kainan along General Santos Drive in Koronadal City, South Cotabato which was inaugurated last 5 April 2003.

To date, Mang Gorio’s suppliers of beef and goat meat come from Midsayap. Gecko Enterprise of Cotabato City supplies its poultry products (chicken and eggs) and Cotabato Mega market for their vegetables and other cooking ingredients. They get their marine supplies from General Santos and Sarangani Province.

One of the objectives of Mang Gorio Bahay Kainan is to open a branch every year and envisions to be the leading local food chain in region XII. It hopes to share at least one-third of Jollibee’s market in the region. They are planning to invest 1 percent of its gross sales in establishing a marketing department for their firm that will look after the promotion and marketing of their product as it is believed that the lifeblood of a business depends a lot on effective marketing strategy. However, right now, they prioritize in the renovation of their main branch. Shaping it just like the other two branches. They wanted to have their own identity built based on filipino epic. From the uniforms worn by the staff to the ambiance, are made known to be the only one having the said concept region-wide.

This restaurant business is being run and managed by the family members and they intend to sustain and development the same with the hope to pass its management to their heirs as a legacy. The business, if not the main, will be one of the firm sources of livelihood for the family. Presently, sons Victor and Virgilio manage the human resource concerns. Another son Vivencio takes charge of ensuring the maintenance of the restaurant. Daughter Vilma Villa Reyes and husband Chirlo Reyes manage the Marbel Branch while another daughter Velina Villa Tobias and and husband Nestor Tobias handle the operation of the Plaza-Branch. Mother Precy on the other hand never stops learning more recipes and makes sure that the quality of their products is maintained.

I couldn’t help but remember what once Virgilio Villa quoted… “What choice you made of yesterday becomes what you are today and the choice you made today becomes your life tomorrow”.

NENE VELASQUEZ

2007-08-28T23:00:00.000-07:00

Bislig's prawn industry no longer small fry
By Chris Panganiban
Mindanao Bureau

BISLIG CITY--Nene Velasquez, a small fishpond operator and buyer of prawns at the public market here, used to deal with loan sharks whenever she ran out of cash to finance her business.

But since becoming a member of the United Hilibis Fishpond Operators Multi-Purpose Cooperative (Unihfomco), Velasquez stopped relying on "5-6," a term used for loan sharks, because she can easily get cash from her group if she needs it.

Like her, the other cooperative members involved in the prawn business are thriving--thanks to Canadian expert Brian Ives, who spent a month or two in 2005 teaching them the right methods to increase their yield.

Changing lives
Ives is part of the Canadian Executive Service Organization-Business Advisory Project (CESO-BAP) under the Canadian International Development Assistance, which helps small and medium enterprises develop through proper management and new technologies.

Aside from changing their lives, Unihfomco is also helping non-members in some other ways, according to Velasquez.

The loan sharks were forced to lower the interest they charge the other small vendors because of the cooperative.

But that's another story.

Dramatic increase
Velasquez said the technology Ives taught to cooperative members has dramatically increased prawn production. A member who used to get only 200 kilograms of prawns per hectare of fishpond now regularly harvests 800 kilos.

The Canadian expert introduced technologies such as water and soil analysis of ponds during the preparation stage, and the use of indigenous materials like sea shells instead of commercial inputs in feeding the prawns.

CESO-BAP technical advisers have earlier found that the absence of a laboratory had driven most prawn growers to resort to trial and error to identify a good fry.

Most of the time, their production failed as fries survived only for a month or two.

The presence of Ives also opened the eyes of the city government to address the other needs of the industry, and led to the establishment of soil and water analysis and testing laboratory.

The Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) also donated laboratory equipment so the tests could be made here, unlike before when pond owners had to endure a five-hour travel to Butuan City.

When prawn production started to increase, growers were called in for a strategic planning workshop.

At the workshop, cooperative members, whose number increased to 30 from the original 11, learned more about the need for better quality of fries, improved technology on production and post harvest, strengthening their group, good financial management and better marketing linkages.

Oversupply
Lothgarda Dionisio, Unihfomco chairperson, said the cooperative has been cashing in on the increased production.

Dionisio said the cooperative can supply an average of 500 to 1,000 kilograms of prawns a day to the Davao City market alone.

These are sold at between P150 and P350 a kilogram depending on the size and quality.

The prospects of exporting quality tiger prawns are also bright since fishermen are fast improving their catch to an average of 240 kilos a day from 80 kilos a day, Dionisio said.

The prawns for export, mostly taken from fish pens on Bislig Bay, are sold at P700 a kilo to a processing plant in Butuan City.

Aside from helping prawn growers, the cooperative has extended a helping hand to the local fishermen who have recently joined the group.

The success of Unifohmco has encouraged Mayor Alberto Tan to allocate P4 million for the establishment of a building near the city hall to house a laboratory and diagnostics center for the fisheries industry.

Aprodecio Alba Jr., city planning officer, said the city government wanted to further develop the fish industry as an alternative source of livelihood for residents.

EDWIN N. AROMA (CEBU philippines)

2007-08-22T23:33:00.000-07:00

By Val G. Abelgas

Janitor, Metropolitan Cleaners, Cebu, 1969-73.” Thus read the last line under “Business and Employment” of the resume of Edwin N. Aroma, a low-profile Cebuano businessman now living in Van Nuys, California. Above this line is a long list of former employment and current business enterprises that range from being an auditor with the San Miguel Corp. to being president and owner of numerous agricultural, financial, and management consultancy firms. Behind this impressive employment and business history is a barrio boy’s story of success, vision, hard work, and dogged determination to achieve the goals he has set for himself.

Edwin N. Aroma was born to a fisherman and a school teacher in Catmon, Cebu on September 11, 1949. As the family grew to three sons and two daughters, Aroma’s mother was forced to stop teaching to attend to the children. The family could hardly get by with the father’s income from fishing.

When Aroma graduated from public high school at 17, he told his father he wanted to be an engineer, but his father said he couldn’t afford to send him to college.

“I didn’t know how to farm nor to fish. I really wanted to study, and make something of myself. So, I asked my father to give me 20 pesos, so I could travel to Cebu City and find a job,” Aroma said. “I applied for so many jobs, and finally found an agency that needed janitors.”

For four years, Aroma labored as a janitor, sweeping streets and alleys and cleaning offices, while he studied accounting at the University of the Visayas. He distinguished himself as a scholar and student leader. He became a college representative and later a university senator. Once, when he was a university senator, some school mates saw him sweeping an alley with fellow janitors from the Metropolitan Cleaners of Cebu, and word spread around in school at once that he was a janitor. Aroma was embarrassed for a moment, but he went on being a janitor and finished his accounting degree in 1973.

When he finally passed the CPA exams and was hired as an auditor for Carlos J. Valdez & Co. in Cebu, Aroma went to the owner of the janitorial services firm.

“I thanked him for employing me for four years, and told him I was resigning. I told the owner and his wife that I had been hired as an auditor, but they wouldn’t believe it. The wife asked: Who would hire you as auditor, you haven’t even finished college? They didn’t know I was studying all the time that I was working as a janitor. I told them I just finished my bachelor’s degree and was reviewing for the board exams,” Aroma said. “When the owner heard this, he came to me and hugged me.”

“We are proud of you and happy for you,” the owner said. “You are our first employee to finish college.”

He served as auditor for Carlos J. Valdez & Co. until 1976, then became auditor for San Miguel Corp. (in Cebu and Manila) until 1978, and then was chief accountant for Mandaue Printers until 1982.

While working for these companies, Aroma continued his studies, finishing two more bachelor’s degrees — in Management and Economics — and a master’s degree in management engineering from the University of the Visayas.

In 1982, his godfather, Ben Boiser, who was living in the U.S., was offered by an Indonesian plywood company a job as accounting manager, but Boisier didn’t want to leave the U.S. Boiser recommended Aroma for the job. Aroma left for Jakarta early that year and became accounting manager of P.T. Hartaty Jaya Plywood, the biggest plywood plant in Indonesia, which was, at that time, on the verge of bankruptcy.

Later that year, the owner died and Aroma was promoted to general manager. Within six months of assuming the helm at the plywood plant, he turned the company around and made it profitable for the first time in years. He managed the plywood company until 1986, but decided to quit his job because he could no longer stand dealing with corrupt Indonesian officials.

During this time, he earned his second master’s degree in Business Administration (financial management) from the University of Singapore.

Aroma, who remains very fluent in Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesia’s national language), went back to the Philippines in March 1986, and looked for a business where he could invest his savings from his Indonesian job.

“I decided on a mango farm because I found out that the demand is high for mangos, the number one fruit in the Philippines. The Philippines can only supply 27% of Asia’s requirements,” Aroma said. From a small plantation in Cebu, he now has three huge plantations in Cebu and another big one in Bohol, totalling 25,000 trees, almost 3,000 of which are bearing 500 fruits each per harvest. The other 22,000 trees are expected to bear fruits for commercial purposes in one or two years.

It takes a mango tree five years to bear fruits. But these fruits will not be of commercial quantity until the tree is eight years old, when it begins to bear from 500 to 800 fruits every year.

Aroma has now become one of the biggest, if not the biggest, mango growers in the Philippines, beating out even Eduardo “Danding” Cojuangco Jr., who has about 15,000 mango trees in Davao.

“In addition to mango, I have also planted avocado and jackfruit trees for commercial purposes,” Aroma said. “I buy idle lands and plant them with trees. I make these idle lands productive, help provide employment for the barrio folks, and, at the same time, help in the ecological development of the country. I am happy to feel that I am helping in the economic development of the country.”

In October 1986, Aroma came to the United States for a much-needed vacation, but decided there are better opportunities awaiting him in the U.S. Since then, Aroma has established numerous businesses. He is president and owner of Trans-World Services Inc., which provides management and financial services to business clients (mostly Jews). “We help find financing for businesses,” he said.

Aroma, who is called by acquaintances as Mr. Future because every time he talks to people, he talks about the future, also owns and operates the Chandler Apartments in Phoenix, Arizona, which has more than 100 rental units. He also owns the Prime Appliance Rentals Inc., based in Los Angeles. Aroma is also a managing partner of Worldwide Empire Funding Inc., based in Delaware; and is controller of All Valley Washer Service Inc., based in Van Nuys, California.

Still a Filipino citizen, Aroma has numerous business and land holdings in the Philippines. He is president of Imgime-Aroma Mango Ranch in Cebu and Bohol; president of Socsargen Realty & Development Corp., based in General Santos City in Cotabato; and president of Capital One Financial Solutions Inc., based in Cebu.

How does he manage all these companies, which are located in at least four cities in the United States, and three cities in the Philippines?

“My managers in the Philippines fax or e-mail to me financial and other reports regularly, and I visit the Philippines at least four times a year to personally look into the businesses,” he said. “With the modern telecommunications systems, you can communicate with your employees from anywhere in the world.”

Aroma is not all about business. In 1988, he finished his third master’s degree in Business Administration (majoring in Global Management) from the University of Phoenix-LA in addition to his three bachelor’s degrees, and will soon receive his Ph.D. in Global Economics from UCLA.

At present, he is chairman of the board of Kiwanis Club of Phil-Am Los Angeles, where he also served as president for two terms (1996-98). In addition, he is executive vice president of the National Association of Cebuanos — USA, vice president of the Cebu Brotherhood Inc., chairman of the Children First Foundation (the only Filipino in the board), executive vice president of the Rainbow Coalition for Philippine Progress (which he helped found along with three other Filipino leaders), and a member of the Philippine-American Institute of CPAs.

He has received numerous awards, among them “Outstanding Club Leader,” Kiwanis Club of Phil-Am Los Angeles; “Distinguished Kiwanian,” Kiwanis International; “Outstanding Civic Leader,” Pamana Awards; “Outstanding Club President,” Kiwanis Club of Phil-Am Los Angeles; “Kiwanian of the Year,” Kiwanis Club; and “Club Builder of the Year,” Children First Foundation Inc.

Aroma now sets his sights to a political career in the Philippines. He plans to run for a congressional seat in his native Cebu, to enable him to contribute his expertise in the fields of global and financial management, and to help the Philippines solve its “economic imbalance.”

Aroma also wants to give attention to the Philippines’ children by teaching them positive mental attitude. “They are the future leaders of our country, and we have to focus our attention to their development,” he said.

Aroma is married to Imelda Ochia of Tubocan, Cebu, whom he met while he was still working as a janitor and she was a ticket clerk in a Cebu City cinema house. “I also urged her to study accounting,” Aroma said proudly. They have three children — Moanna, 21; Imee, 15; and Edwin Jr., 4.

Aroma tells all his children and his friends proudly that he was once a janitor, who had to work hard day and night to make his dreams come true. He has achieved many dreams, but Aroma never stops dreaming. And when he sets his sights on one thing, he does everything to achieve it. Such is the mark of a successful man.

WILSON NG (CEBU, Philippines)

2007-08-22T23:06:00.000-07:00

Ng Khai Development Corporation’s story begins in Cebu, fueled by a man whose passion for computers matched his drive to become a successful entrepreneur.

Wilson Ng was born in 1965 to a Filipino-Chinese family. Ng says he has three passions in life: business management, learning and writing, and computer technology. As a young boy, Ng already knew he would become an entrepreneur. At the age of nine, he was already helping in the family’s food business. Ng discovered his passion for computers while taking up business management in the University of the Philippines in Cebu. When he graduated from college, he followed his heart and worked as a programmer in Taiwan. However, Ng had to temporarily shelve his IT career when his father passed away in 1989, leaving him in-charge of their food business.

Being a dutiful son, he took over the family business but could not shake off his IT dream. When he was able to turn over the management of the family business to his sister in 1992, Ng’s brainchild was born. The company was named Ng Khai Development Corporation in honor of his late father.

Ng Khai initially started as a computer software company. To cater to the increasing demands of its customers, Ng Khai broadened its product base to become Cebu’s one-stop shop for integrated IT business solutions. It offered a vast array of IT products ranging from computer hardware, software, software development, web development services, training, networking, and systems integration. Ng Khai eventually became the recognized and preferred local systems integration company in Cebu and Northern Mindanao.

Over the years, Ng Khai has grown to keep up with the dynamic IT industry. Ng Khai now employs over 120 IT professionals to service its growing clientele. The business caters primarily to the Visayas and Northern Mindanao areas. It has a coordinating office in Manila and contracts with companies in the United Kingdom, US, and Japan.

Ng Khai has partnered with global IT brands such as Canon, Cisco, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle to ensure the premiere quality of the services and equipment it gives its customers. Ng Khai is the only Microsoft Large Account Reseller in the South, and is the exclusive Visayas distributor of 3M Visual products.

Through the efforts of Ng Khai, Wilson Ng hopes to help improve the Southern Philippines’ economy by making it attractive to investors as outsourcing sites. He firmly believes that young Filipino professionals outside the National Capital Region should have equal opportunities to work in their provinces and not have to go to Manila or overseas to find suitable employment.

Ng has also established e*Sprint Software, a spin-off that produces business management solutions for small and medium companies here and abroad. e*Sprint has recently entered into a joint venture with Innovista Technologies in Manila to form E-vista Techonologies, a new outfit aiming to introduce the e*Sprint products to Metro Manila. With this, Ng hopes to successfully penetrate the Metro Manila market, one of the toughest challenges for a provincial-based IT business.

Not one to sit on his laurels, Ng attributes part of his success to his stable of IT professionals. What he instills is “the feeling that this is not only a job, but also a responsibility.”

He acknowledges the dynamism of his business, saying “there are twin challenges in the computer business. The hardware side is very competitive, margins are getting slimmer, and many products are getting commoditized. The software side presents a potential. However, there is a need to convince the local market to pay a good price for quality service and technical expertise.”

Ng, at 39, does not yet consider his life a success story. His philosophy in life sums his idea of success: “I may be a learned scholar, a successful businessman, or a good father/husband, but until I am all three, I have not succeeded.”

He is looking forward to that day in the future when he will be truly successful.

MANNY VILLAR (Philippines)

2007-08-21T22:49:00.001-07:00

The public life of Manny Villar straddles both the worlds of business and politics. He is one of the few who managed to excel in both.

Working Student

He was born to a simple family on December 13, 1949 in Moriones, Tondo, Manila. His father, Manuel Montalban Villar, Sr., a government employee, hailed from Cabatuan, Balazan, and Tanza, Iloilo and his mother Curita Bamba, a seafood dealer, came from Pampanga and Bataan. Manny is the second child in a brood of nine. At a very young age, he was already helping his mother sell shrimp and fish in the Divisoria Market. With the burning desire for a better future and a strong determination to improve his family’s living conditions, Manny worked hard in selling shrimps and fish to be able to send himself to school.

“I learned from my mother what it takes to be an entrepreneur, “ he revealed. “And it means working really hard to achieve your dreams.” In Divisoria, he marveled at the volume of sales that Chinese merchants were making, thus he vowed early on to become an entrepreneur.

Hard work, persistence, and perseverance became his guiding principles in life. This earned him the title “Mr. Sipag at Tiyaga.”

He continues to inspire Filipinos with his life story and encourages each and every kababayan to improve their quality of life and fulfill their dreams through the very values he believes in -- “sipag at tiyaga.”

Entrepreneur

Manny Villar was a working student at the University of the Philippines, the premier institution of higher learning in the country, where he obtained his undergraduate and master’s degree in business administration and accountancy. By then, he was also putting in long hours as fish and shrimp trader, where the action starts during the ungodly hours of the morning when the catch lands on the market.

After graduation, he tried his hand as an accountant at the country’s biggest accounting firm, Sycip Gorres and Velayo (SGV). He resigned shortly though to venture on his own seafood delivery business.

When a restaurant he was delivering stocks to did not pay him, he printed out “meal tickets” which he persuaded the restaurant owners to honor. He then sold these tickets at a discounted price to office workers. It took him one year to liquidate his receivables.

He worked briefly as a financial analyst at the Private Development Corporation of the Philippines. His job was to sell World Bank loans, despite the attractive rates of which there were no takers. Convinced that he could make it on his own again, he quit his job and promptly availed of one of the loans.

So with an initial capital of P10,000 in 1975, Villar purchased two reconditioned trucks and started his sand-and-gravel business in Las Piñas.

Housing Innovator

It is here while delivering construction materials to big developers that Manny Villar came up with the idea of selling house and lot packages when the convention then was for homeowners to buy lots and build on them.

Manny Villar became the housing industry leader, and the biggest homebuilder in Southeast Asia, having built more than 100,000 houses for the poor and middle class Filipino families.

He then initiated mass housing projects to achieve economies of scale. His various innovations practically created the country’s mass housing industry. The Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism calls him “the dean of the (Philippine) real estate industry.”

Awards and Distinctions

For his business achievements, he was made cover story in the Far Eastern Economic Review. And his life story was also featured in Asiaweek, Forbes, AsiaMoney and Asian Business Review.

He garnered various awards such as the Ten Outstanding Young Men Award (1986) by the Philippine Jaycees, Agora Award for Outstanding Achievement in Marketing Management (1989), Most Outstanding CPA by the Philippine Institute of Certified Public Accountants (1990) and Most Outstanding UP Alumnus (1991).

Political Career

In a stunning political debut in 1992, Villar won with the most overwhelming mandate among congressmen in Metro Manila. He promptly applied his economic and managerial expertise as a key member of the House’s economic team, marshalling in economic reform measures of the Ramos Administration such as the New Foreign Investments Act and the restructuring of the Central Bank of the Philippines. He was the House representative in the government’s negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington D.C. in 1992.

He also oversaw various infrastructure projects in his districts like the construction of concrete roads and the Alabang-Zapote Flyover. He introduced the “Friendship Route” to ease the traffic problems in southern Manila by persuading subdivision homeowners to open up their roads to the general public.

He succeeded in passing Republic Act 8003 “Declaring Certain Areas in Las Piñas as Tourist Spots”. The law formalized his program of rehabilitating historical and cultural landmarks in Las Piñas starting with the world-famous Bamboo Organ Church. The ongoing project dubbed as “Las Piñas Historical Corridor” covers the stretch of the Old District and may even rival the Intramuros and Vigan restoration projects.

A staunch environmentalist, he initiated a privately funded tree planting drive in his district. He developed a P10-million tree nursery beside his home. He also quietly led a dedicated tree-planting drive complete with maintenance and watering of tree seedlings planted in the open spaces of the community.

When he realized that many poor students could not go to school because they do not even have fare money, he organized the “Manpower on Wheels” Program, a livelihood training school housed in a van that makes the rounds in depressed areas. The program has since produced more than 5,000 graduates and has been awarded by various government and civic organizations for its innovative scheme.

During his first term, he steered Las Piñas and Muntinlupa to cityhood. “As a developer, I have always envisioned these two communities as the ‘Twin Cities of the South’ of Manila. In fact, Las Piñas and Muntinlupa are the two fastest growing communities in the country today, he pointed out.”

For his constituency work and personal vow, he extended grants of home sites to some 10,000 poor families in Barangay CAA, Las Piñas City. Two major roads were also opened in his district; the Sucat-Pulanglupa Link Road to Parañaque and the Zapote-Molino (Daang Hari) Link Road to Cavite, thus alleviating the traffic congestion in the area.

During his second term, he was able to upgrade the Las Piñas District Hospital with a new building and better facilities. He also launched the “Sagip-Bukas” Drug Prevention Program on all the private and public schools of Las Piñas to educate the youth about the dangers of drug abuse. He also nationalized the Las Piñas High School to upgrade its facilities.

By the end of his second term of office, Villar had already proven beyond doubt his capacity for excellence as a true Filipino entrepreneur and a brilliant public servant who can get things done.

ERIC JOSEPH Q. TOLO (Businessman,Ormoc, Philippines)

2007-08-21T20:35:00.000-07:00

Eric Joseph Tolo is one of the most admired young entrepreneurs in Ormoc City, Philippines today. His personality immersed to provide more jobs, businesses & even more entrepreneurs. His success is being admired considering all the effort he made on the line of business. Eventually, he gained his success by starting a small business with his excellent marketing strategy.

MARIANO QUE (Founder of Mercury Drug Philippines)

2007-08-20T19:01:00.000-07:00

Mariano Que (Mercury Drug) has always believed in the concept of total customer service. This can be summed up in its corporate philosophy: "To serve you, to have what you want, when you want it." It has been its commitment since it started.

It all began in 1945 just after the liberation of Manila. Mariano Que, realizing the need for medicines, started a very humble business venture with his hard earned P100. He bought a bottle of "Sulfathiazole" and street-peddled this in the sidewalk of Bambang, Sta. Cruz, Manila. From pushcart selling and with his previous working experience in a drugstore before the war, he eventually opened a drugstore on March 1, 1945. He named it after "Mercury", in Roman mythology the messenger of gods, the god of commerce and manual skill. Mercury’s winged feet symbolize speed and the caduceus he carries the medical profession. These qualities sum up Mercury Drug’s quest of delivering fresh and reliable medicines to the public through prompt service.

In 1945, Mercury Drug introduced a better way to make medicines more affordable to more Filipinos: "Tingi-tingi" or by piece method of selling. From then on it introduced many "firsts" in the Philippine drugstore: In 1948, its first motorized customer delivery service; In 1952, the 17-hour, 7 days a week drugstore service; In 1963, the country’s first self-service drugstore; In 1965, the 24-hour, 7 days a week service; In 1967, the first computerized temperature-controlled central warehouse: In 1969, the first drugstore chain to use biological refrigerators to preserve life-saving medicines: In 1976, the first drugstore chain to expand throughout Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao.

Upon the invitation of Ayala Corporation, Mercury Drug opened its second branch in May 1963 at a developing commercial center (now known as the Ayala Center) in Makati. This move opened the door to the establishment of the landmark branch in Quiapo, Manila in 1965 and the opening of more branches thus bringing Mercury Drug’s service closer to many Filipinos.

Today :

The company is considered as the leading drug store chain in the country with a network of more than 500 company-owned and franchised stores serving the public at the most convenient places in Metro Manila, Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao. It has a workforce of over 7,000 employees totally committed to professional excellence and dedicated service. It coordinates this vast network of stores at its head office in Bagumbayan, Quezon City which also houses its modern distribution center operating on the concept of centralized buying and warehousing. It belongs to the top 20 companies in sales performance for the past several years.

As it was then and now, Mercury Drug’s main concern is customer service, more especially if it would mean saving a life. It continues to make available despite of high carrying costs, life-saving drugs like serum, blood plasma, albumin, and the like. For the shopping convenience of its customers, it carries, aside from pharmaceutical items, basic daily household needs, health care products, personal care products, cosmetics, toiletries and other convenience products. It has also incorporated value added facilities and services in selected stores.

To maintain its present leadership in the drug retailing business, the company continues to innovate. It keeps up with modern technology and upgrades its computer facilities in the head office, stores and distribution center to support its services.

These qualities of Mercury Drug earned for the company various recognition from different sectors. To name a few: "Retailer of the Year" award in 1964 from the Business Writers Association of the Philippines for its innovative service concepts; "Quezon City’s Best in Business" in 1994 from the Government of Quezon City and the Rotary International District 3780; Consumers Union of the Philippines’ "Hall of Fame" Awardee in 1996 for having been awarded as Most Outstanding Pharmaceutical Retailer for 5 consecutive times; "1996 PMAP Award for Outstanding Employer of the Year" from the Personnel Management Association of the Philippines; "Most Outstanding Drug Store Chain" in 1999 from the New Millennium Excellence Award Committee and the Parangal ng Bayan Awards Foundation jointly with the National Consumers Council in recognition of its products/services beneficial to the consuming public. In the 1999 7th Annual Review 200: Asia’s Leading Companies survey done by Far Eastern Economic Review, Mercury Drug ranks number 8 among the top 10 Philippines-based companies and number 3 among the top 5 Philippines-based companies in terms of high quality services/products.

BILL GATES

2007-08-20T08:04:00.000-07:00

Family and Early Childhood

On October 28, 1955, shortly after 9:00 p.m., William Henry Gates III was born. He was born into a family with a rich history in business, politics, and community service. His great-grandfather had been a state legislator and mayor, his grandfather was the vice president of a national bank, and his father was a prominent lawyer. [Wallace, 1992, p. 8-9] Early on in life, it was apparent that Bill Gates inherited the ambition, intelligence, and competitive spirit that had helped his progenitors rise to the top in their chosen professions. In elementary school he quickly surpassed all of his peer's abilities in nearly all subjects, especially math and science. His parents recognized his intelligence and decided to enroll him in Lakeside, a private school known for its intense academic environment. This decision had far reaching effects on Bill Gates's life. For at Lakeside, Bill Gates was first introduced to computers.

First computing Experience

In the Spring of 1968, the Lakeside prep school decided that it should acquaint the student body with the world of computers [Teamgates.com, 9/29/96]. Computers were still too large and costly for the school to purchase its own. Instead, the school had a fund raiser and bought computer time on a DEC PDP-10 owned by General Electric. A few thousand dollars were raised which the school figured would buy more than enough time to last into the next school year. However, Lakeside had drastically underestimated the allure this machine would have for a hand full of young students.

Bill Gates, Paul Allen, and a few other Lakeside students (many of whom were the first programmers hired at Microsoft) immediately became inseparable from the computer. They would stay in the computer room all day and night, writing programs, reading computer literature and anything else they could to learn about computing. Soon Gates and the others started running into problems with the faculty. Their homework was being turned in late (if at all), they were skipping classes to be in the computer room and worst of all, they had used up all of the schools computer time in just a few weeks. [Wallace, 1992, p. 24]

In the fall of 1968, Computer Center Corporation opened for business in Seattle. It was offering computing time at good rates, and one of the chief programmers working for the corporation had a child attending Lakeside. A deal was struck between Lakeside Prep School and the Computer Center Corporation that allowed the school to continue providing it's students with computer time. [Wallace, 1992, p. 27] Gates and his comrades immediately began exploring the contents of this new machine. It was not long before the young hackers started causing problems. They caused the system to crash several times and broke the computers security system. They even altered the files that recorded the amount of computer time they were using. They were caught and the Computer Center Corporation banned them from the system for several weeks.

Bill Gates, Paul Allen and, two other hackers from Lakeside formed the Lakeside Programmers Group in late 1968. They were determined to find a way to apply their computer skills in the real world. The first opportunity to do this was a direct result of their mischievous activity with the school's computer time. The Computer Center Corporation's business was beginning to suffer due to the systems weak security and the frequency that it crashed. Impressed with Gates and the other Lakeside computer addicts' previous assaults on their computer, the Computer Center Corporation decided to hire the students to find bugs and expose weaknesses in the computer system. In return for the Lakeside Programming Group's help, the Computer Center Corporation would give them unlimited computer time [Wallace, 1992, p. 27]. The boys could not refuse. Gates is quoted as saying "It was when we got free time at C-cubed (Computer Center Corporation) that we really got into computers. I mean, then I became hardcore. It was day and night" [Wallace, 1992, p. 30]. Although the group was hired just to find bugs, they also read any computer related material that the day shift had left behind. The young hackers would even pick employees for new information. It was here that Gates and Allen really began to develop the talents that would lead to the formation of Microsoft seven years later.

Roots of Business Career

Computer Center Corporation began to experience financial problems late in 1969. The company finally went out of business in March of 1970. The Lakeside Programmers Group had to find a new way to get computer time. Eventually they found a few computers on the University of Washington's campus where Allen's dad worked. The Lakeside Programmers Group began searching for new chances to apply their computer skills. Their first opportunity came early the next year when Information Sciences Inc. hired them to program a payroll program. Once again the group was given free computer time and for the first time, a source of income. ISI had agreed to give them royalties whenever it made money from any of the groups programs. As a result of the business deal signed with Information Sciences Inc., the group also had to become a legal business [Wallace, 1992, p. 42-43]. Gates and Allen's next project involved starting another company entirely on their own, Traf-O-Data. They produced a small computer which was used to help measure traffic flow. From the project they grossed around $20,000. The Traf-O-Data company lasted until Gates left for college. During Bill Gates' junior year at Lakeside, the administration offered him a job computerizing the school's scheduling system. Gates asked Allen to help with the project. He agreed and the following summer, they wrote the program. In his senior year, Gates and Allen continued looking for opportunities to use their skills and make some money. It was not long until they found this opportunity. The defense contractor TRW was having trouble with a bug infested computer similar to the one at Computer Center Corporation. TRW had learned of the experience the two had working on the Computer Center Corporation's system and offered Gates and Allen jobs. However thing would be different at TRW they would not be finding the bugs they would be in charge of fixing them. "It was at TRW that Gates began to develop as a serious programer," and it was there that Allen and Gates first started talking seriously about forming their own software company [Wallace, 1992, p. 49-51].

In the fall of 1973, Bill Gates left home for Harvard University [Teamgates.com, 9/29/96]. He had no idea what he wanted to study, so he enrolled as prelaw. Gates took the standard freshman courses with the exception of signing up for one of Harvard's toughest math courses. He did well but just as in high school, his heart was not in his studies. After locating the school's computer center, he lost himself in the world of computers once again. Gates would spend many long nights in front of the school's computer and the next days asleep in class. Paul Allen and Gates remained in close contact even with Bill away at school. They would often discuss ideas for future projects and the possibility of one day starting a business. At the end of Gates's first year at Harvard, the two decided that Allen should move closer to him so that they may be able to follow up on some of their ideas. That summer they both got jobs working for Honeywell [Wallace, 1992, p. 59]. As the summer dragged on, Allen began to push Bill harder with the idea that they should open a software company. Gates was still not sure enough to drop out of school. The following year, however, that would all change.

The Birth of Microsoft

In December of 1974, Allen was on his way to visit Gates when along the way he stopped to browse the current magazines. What he saw changed his and Bill Gates's lives forever. On the cover of Popular Electronics was a picture of the Altair 8080 and the headline "World's First Microcomputer Kit to Rival Commercial Models." He bought the issue and rushed over to Gates's dorm room. They both recognized this as their big opportunity. The two knew that the home computer market was about to explode and that someone would need to make software for the new machines. Within a few days, Gates had called MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems), the makers of the Altair. He told the company that he and Allen had developed a BASIC that could be used on the Altair [Teamgates.com, 9/29/96]. This was a lie. They had not even written a line of code. They had neither an Altair nor the chip that ran the computer. The MITS company did not know this and was very interested in seeing their BASIC. So, Gates and Allen began working feverishly on the BASIC they had promised. The code for the program was left mostly up to Bill Gates while Paul Allen began working on a way to simulate the Altair with the schools PDP-10. Eight weeks later, the two felt their program was ready. Allen was to fly to MITS and show off their creation. The day after Allen arrived at MITS, it was time to test their BASIC. Entering the program into the company's Altair was the first time Allen had ever touched one. If the Altair simulation he designed or any of Gates's code was faulty, the demonstration would most likely have ended in failure. This was not the case, and the program worked perfectly the first time [Wallace, 1992, p. 80]. MITS arranged a deal with Gates and Allen to buy the rights to their BASIC.[Teamgates.com, 9/29/96] Gates was convinced that the software market had been born. Within a year, Bill Gates had dropped out of Harvard and Microsoft was formed.

LUCIO TAN (Philippines)

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Dr. Lucio Tan is a household name in the Philippines. Perhaps only a few have not heard of the Chinese immigrant who have a great impact in the lives of the citizens of his adapted country.

Filipinos in the United States or any place in the world, could relate to the success story of this man from Fujian.

BUILDING AN EMPIRE THRU HARDWORK

The success of Mr. Lucio Tan’s enterprise is deeply rooted on liquor and tobacco.

He owns Fortune Tobacco, the Philippine’s biggest cigarette-manufacturing company; Asia Brewery, the second largest producer of beer and bottled water; Tanduay Distillers, one of the oldest and biggest rhum producer in the world; and Philippine Airlines, Asia's first airline.

Back in 1965 when Mr. Tan was just setting up Fortune Tobacco, the domestic market for cigarettes was dominated by old established companies.

With his meager funds, he wondered how he could position his products against the more than a hundred local and foreign brands competing in a cut-throat market.

Through research and ingenuity, His first Brand, Ever Cool, made it to the market with success. Now, another product of him Winston, is a top seller in the Philippines.

DIVERSIFICATION

With the success of Fortune Tobacco in the 70’s, Mr. Lucio Tan started the diversification of his conglomerate.

In 1970, He brought in from Taiwan the advance livestock technology to set up Foremost Farms, one of the biggest in Asia. in 1977, He acquired the defunct General Banking Corp ( GEN BANK ) and named it Allied Banking Corporation. Through innovation and restructuring, it now consistently ranks among the top 10 banks in the Philippines in terms of asset and deposit base. The core institution of Mr. Tan’s conglomerate is based at the bank’s building in the hearth of Makati.

In 1978, Mr. Tan acquired Riverside Steel, Inc and renamed it Grandspan Development Corp, a company that is recognized in the construction business all over the world. In 1982, he opened Asia Brewery and penetrated the beer market long dominated by San Miguel Corp.

In 1985, he purchased the 500-room, five star Century Park Hotel, now a favorite venue among local and foreign businessmen. Also the same year, he established Macro Asia Corp to provide catering, ground handling, engineering and maintenance services to its sister company PAL, and to over 20 international carriers landing in the Philippines.

The man from Fujian is now the owner of Lucio Tan Group of companies.

HENRY SY (Philippines)

2007-08-20T06:37:00.000-07:00

Henry Sy’s rise to the top is a feel good story for the ages. In 1936, at the age of 12, he immigrated from mainland China to help run his father’s grocery in Manila, often sleeping on display counters because he had no place to sleep. The spartan life he lived probably played a big part in molding Sy’s character as a smart and calculating businessman, and that is probably why he is still a hands-on owner at the prime age of 80. He regularly visits his malls to check on how things are running, and is usually spotted wearing his trademark Hawaiian shirts.

Sy’s work ethic and determination has made him one of the country’s leading businessmen, and a prominent name in the international business scene. The boy who once worked 14 hours a day long before the 24/7 concept caught on is estimated to be worth a cool $1.7 billion, not bad for a guy who still keeps his first cash register (a brass one) in his office.

Henry Sy, Sr. opened the first Shoemart store along Rizal Avenue in downtown Manila in 1958. He conceptualized a chain of shoe stores, each characterized by a distinct merchandising layout never before attempted in the country. In the sixties, the company expanded its shoe store chain. It was one of the pioneers in the new urban centers when it opened bigger shoe stores at the Makati Commercial Center in 1953 and in Cubao in 1967.

In the seventies, Shoemart marked its shift from a shoe store to a full line department store with SM Echague, and later SM Makati in 1975. This was also the time that Shoemart became known as SM Shoemart or simply SM, a name that has become synonymous with one stop shopping excitement. SM positioned itself for growth in the eigthies, diversifying into the supermarket and appliance store businesses. Late 1985 marked the opening of its first shopping mall, SM City North EDSA. SM emerged as a key players in the shopping center industry in the 1990’s giving rise to the malling phenomenon in the Philippines.

Today, SM is a dynamic group of companies with core businesses in retail merchandising and shopping centers, and complementary businesses in financial services and real estate and tourism development. In early 2005, SM Investments Corporation, its holding company, launched what is considered the biggest initial public offering in the Philippine Stock Exchange.

SM’s 22 supermalls, 25 department stores, and hundreds of retail stores have become part of the lives of many Filipinos. More than 1.5 million customers visit SM supermalls everyday. These are places where they shop, eat out, watch movies, or simply spend fun times together with family and friends. SM Group is a retail giant with 38,600 employees and annual revenues of $1.7 billion. More than that, SM has made its impact in the local and international business community, and is recognized as one of the top companies in Asia.

Mr. Henry Sy Sr.’s formula for success is a fourteen-point list of attitudes and practices that one must strive for in order to succeed in business and in life. One of them reads: “Be disciplined. Second best does not exist. In work, always strive for excellence in products, service and operations. Put a premium on savings because of the need to be prepared for all contingencies in business, politics and personal life. Do not waste anything. And try to live a simple life.

The top billionaires in the Philippines

2007-08-20T01:48:00.000-07:00

Excerpted from Geoff Hiscock's "Asia's Wealth Club"

Tan Yu, Fuga Internationale Group, Philippines ( $3.2 billion US) Chairman: Fuga Internationale Group:
Born: 1935, Bico region of Luzon, Philippines
Marital status; Married, eldest daughter Emilia, eldest son Elton.
Tna Yu, born into a copra-trading family in the Philippines, has built up a textile, retailing, hotel and property-development operation which extends to China and the United States. But Taiwan is the major facus, where his flagship is Asia Trust & Investment Corp., and his other interests include the Asiaworld Department Store and the Asiaworld Hotel in Taipei, and Asiaworld Investment Corp.
Tan Yu has hotel and property interests in China, mainly in Jujian province. In the United States he has banking and real-estate interests in Californa, Nevada and Texas, including a sizeable land bank outside Houston. His eldest son, Elton Tan See, runs the family's hotels in Taiwan while daughter Tan Bien-Bien, known in the Philippines as Emilia Roxas runs the main company, Asia Internationale Group.

Don Jaime Zobel de Ayala and family, Philippines Ayala Corp. ($2.8 billion US) Outside of Japan and Korea, the Ayala family of the Philippines is one of the few non-Chinese clans that rank among Asia's super-rich. Founded in 1834 by Spanish settler Don Antonio de Ayala, the Ayala group has grown into a conglomerate with annual revenues of US$1 billion on the strenght of its trade in sugar, coffee plantations, other agribusiness, financial services, property development, telecommunications and aviation.
A huge land bank in the Makati area of Metro Manila has been central to the Ayala group's fortunes, with sales from its development generating as much as 60 percent of annual revenue. Other key companies in the group include 43-percent owned Bank of the Philippines Islands, 75 percent owned Pure Foods Corp and 38 percent owned Globe Telecom, where its major partner is Singapore Telecom.

George TY and family,(from Fujian Province, China) Metrobank, Philippines ($2.8 billion US) George TY Siao Kian and his family hold a 65 percent interest in Metropolitan Bank and Trust Co (known as Metrobank), which is the Philippines largest bank ranked by assets and profits, and the largest overall financial conglomerate in the country.
Ty, born in China's Fujian province, began his business career in foodstuffs, establishing the Wellington Flour Mills in the mid-1950's. With money from his successful flour-milling venture, he set up Metrobank in 1962 with some associates, and determined to target the ethnic Chinese business community.
The bank's progress was steady enough for the first two decades, but then burst of spectacular growth in the mid-1990's lifted Metrobank out of the ruck and allowed it to overtake Philippines National Bank and Bank of the Philippine Islands for the top spot. By 1996 Metrobank had more than 430 branches, including offices in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and the United States.
Manuel Villar, C&P Homes, Philippines ($2.4 billion US) Born in Manila, Philippines. Congressman Manuel Villar and his wife Cynthia control the listed company C&P Homes, a developer of low-income housing that has proved immensely popular with both its customers and investors. Foreign investors snapped up more than 60 percent of the 566 million shares on offer in June 1995 when Villar took the company to the market with an initial public offering of 20 percent of the stdock for about US$320 million.

Henry Sy, (from Fujian Province, China) SM Prime Holdings, Philippines ($1.9 billion US) Born in Fujian province China. Henry Sy is the Philippines' retail king. It is a position reached from a simple strategy: build a shopping mall, pack it with entertainment like cinemas, video games and restuarants, and the shoppers will come. It has been a winning formulas, with Sy acknowledged as the pioneer of megamalls. He built his first, SM City, in 1985 in Metro Manila's suburban Quezon City and followed with three more in Metro Manila and one in Cebu City, in the central Philippines.
The story of Henry Sy, whose Chines name is Si Tsi Xing, starts in China's Fujian province, where he was born in Long Hu Hong Xi in 1925. While still in his teens, Sy migrated with his parents to the Philippines, where his family opened a small drygoods store in the Quiapo commercial district of Manila. Sy studied at Far Eastern University in Manila and worked after hours buying and selling shoes as a middleman for shoe stores. In 1948 he opened his first shoe store and through the 1950s was able to set up a string of similar stores, finally forming Shoemart in 1960.
From shoes, Sy ventured into department stores and then into the bigger arean of shopping malls. By the end of 1996, his retail SM chain numbered nine department stores and five malls, including the massive SM Megamall in Metro Manila's Mandaluyong city.

Lucio Tan, (from Fujian Province, China) Philippine Airlines, Fortune Tobacco, Philippines ($1.7 billion US) Born in Xiamen, China. Beer, tobacco, banking, property, an airline- these are just the most visible pieces of the empire that Lucio Tan has built in the Philippines, Hong Kong and North America in the past three decades. Apart from Philippine Airlines, none of his companies is listed and Tan likes to keep it that way. No stranger to controversy on his way to great wealth, Tan sees no reason to go public if he can avoid it.
For many years Tan was regarded as the wealthiest ethnic Chinese in the Philippines until it appeared that banking tycoon George Ty had surged past him in the mid 1990's. Then again, Lucio and his brothers may have other assets that are not in the public eye. Tan, born in Xiamen, in China's Fujian province, moved to Cebu with his parents while still a boy, labouring away at different jobs until he found his corporate career in the Philippines when he set up his Fortune Tobacco Corp in 1966. In the next three decades, despite his love of privacy, his name was never far from the headlines. He was regarded as a crony of the late Ferdinand Marcos, and was alleged to have won tax concessions in return for campaign funds during the Marsos era. In the 1980's and 1990's, he faced a flurry of courtroom jousts- first with Corazon Aquino's government over whether his companies were secretly held for the Marcos family, and later with the Fidel Ramos administration over allegations of tax evasion by Fortune Tobacco. In September 1996, Tan finally onw the prize he had been seeking since 1992- control of Philippine Airlines.

Andrew Gotianun Sr. and family, Filinvest Group, Philippines ($1.5 billion US) Born in 1927. Andrew Gotianun and his family control the Philippines seventh largest listed company, Filinvest Development Corp (FDC), which in turn holds 70 per cent of property developer Filinvest Land. The two listed companies which had respective market capitalizations of US$1.8 billion and US$1.2 billion in early 1997, are among the biggest real-estate companies in the Philippines, exceeded only by the Ayala family's giant Ayala Land Inc.

Eugenio (Geny) Lopez Jr., Benpres Holdings, ABS-CBN Broadcasting, Philippines, educated at Harvard University ($1.4 billion US) The Lopez name is synonymous with big business in the Philippines a legacy of the empire built up in media, banking and power generation by the late Eugenio Lopez I. Lopez, regarded as the Philippines' wealthiest business figure of the 1960s, died in 1975 in the United States, a bitter and broken man after a close relationship with the lat President Ferdinand Marcos turned soar in the early 1970's.
Today, his son Eugenio (Geny) Lopez Jr. who spent five years in a military jail during the Marcos era before escaping in November 1977 to the United States, guides the family's rebuilt US$1.4 billion fortune through its flagship company, Benpress Holdings. Geny Lopez Jr., who returned to the Philippines after the overthrow of Marcos in 1986, is president and chief executive of Benpres, chairman of ABS-CBN Broadcasting (where his sone Eugenio Lopez III is president) and chairman of 17 percent held Philippine Commercial International Bank.

John Gokongwei, JG Summit, Philippines ($1.0 billion US) Born 1927, Cebu City, Philippines. John Gokongwei was born into a wealthy Cebu based trading family originally from China's Fujian province. His grandfather, Pedro Gotiaoco, set up Gotiaoco Hermanos in the nineteenth century and built it inot one of the biggest enterprises in Cebu. But the family fortune was lost during the Second World War and it was Gokongwei's responsibility to put food on the table during the difficult years of the Japanese occupation.
He started his business career during the war, buying and selling rice, cloth and scrap metal. After the war, he set up a cornstarch factory called Universal Corn Products with his brothers. From there he ventured into textile production, property development, retailing and, later, banking, aviation, petrochemicals, infrastructure and telecommunications.
In the turbulent days after the fall of President Ferndinand Marcos in 1986, real estate in the Philippines was cheap. Gokongwei saw the potential and bought land in the now-booming Ortigas business district, where he built his Robinson's Galleria mall in 1987.
Other major companies are listed food company Universal Robina Corp., property company Robisnson's Land Corp, PCI Bank (fifth largest bank in ght Philippines) and in financial services through PCI insurance brokers, PCI Capital Corp and Philippines Commercial Credit Card Inc.
Gokongwei is president and holds a controlling 57 percent stake in the new phone company Digital Telecom, which he aims to make the nation's second largest carrier after Philippine Long distance Telephone(PLDT). His power and oil interests are through 20 percent stakes respectively in First Philippine Power Corp and Oriental Petroleum and Minerals Corp.
Gokongwei's latest property developments include Robinsons Tower, a 30,000 square metre block in Makati, and the 81,000 square meter PCIB Tower in Ortigas. His ambitions have also taken wing with Cebu Pacific Air, an airline he set up in March 1996 to compete with Lucio Tan's Philippine Airlines on the busy Manila-Cebu route.

Alfonso T. Yuchengco, (from Fujian Province, China) House of Investments, Philippines ($1.0 billion US) Born 1923, Manila. Board Chairman industrialist, diplomat and Chief Taipan of the Filipino-Chinese, Alfonso Yuchengco is one of the five most important leaders of the international Chinese business community in Asia. An MBA graduate from Columbia University, a former ambassador to China and current ambassador to Japan, Yuchengco's influence is extraordinarily broad. Alfonso joined his father in business in 1950 and today chairs 15 companies, with 42 percent owned listed House of Investments and 16 percent owned Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. as the flagship vehicles. Rizal Commercial Bank is the Philippines' eighth largest bank, with assets of US$2.5 billion. Through its many subsidiaries, House of Investments is involved in banking, consumer finance, construction, power, infrastructure, agribusiness, real estate, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing and services.

Edwardo Cojuangco Jr. and family, UCP Bank, San Miguel Corp. Philippines ($1.0 billion US) One part of the Cojuangco name is synonymous with the powerful business elite who supported the late President Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines during the 1970's and 1980's. When Marcos fell in the April 1986 "People Power" revolt, Edwardo fled Manila and spent1986-98 in exile in the United States. But Cojuangco, who is godfather to Marcos's son Bong Bong, returned in 1989, regained three seats on the board of the United Coconut Planters Bank that he cofounded in 1975, and made an unsuccessful run for the vice-presidency in 1992.
Before the downfall of Marcos, Cojuangco had monopoly control of the Philippines' coconut industry. In addition to SMC and the United Coconut Planters Bank, his business interests today include agribusiness, mining, shipping, plantations, beverage distribution and a stake in the Mudgee wine-growing district of Australia, where he also runs a horse stud.
Andres Soriano III San Miguel Corporation (US$1.0 billion) Born Manila. Educated at the Wharton School, USA. Andres is Chairman and Chief executive of the largest non-oil company in the Philippines, San Miguel Corporation, which had 1995 revenue of US$2.6 billion and profits of US$456 million. The Soriano family, who have been major shareholders in SMC for decades, have been long-time business rivals of the Cojuangco clan which rose to prominence in SMC during the Marcos era.
With 33,000 employees, SMC is the Philippines' largest private employer. It had a market capitalization, including A and B shares, of around US$5.7 billion in early 1997. Apart from their stake in SMC, the Sorianos have their own listed business group, A. Soriano Corporation, which acts as an investment and management company. They also have a stake in Atlas Consolidated Mining and Development Corp.

ABOUT JOEL

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As a beginner of the Internet world I'm trying to become one of the professionals who make money on the Internet. Ive heard plenty of news on how they make tons of income by just staying at their home. I hope I will find ways how to do it.

Anyway, for those who had just open this site I would like to introduce myself first. I am Joel Escoton, a graduate of Bachelor of Science on Accountancy Education, residing at Ormoc City, Philippines. I am currently working on a Financing Corporation. My only hobby is to sing with my guitar, playing table tennis and Internet surfing while I'm at home. I also love to meet more people to make more friends.

I made this site because I was inspired by a friend who make very huge business by starting in just a very small one. His name is already known in our place but only few people knows how he did it and become a very successful one. So, I titled this blog as "GREAT SUCCESS STORY" as a tribute to my very good friend Eric...