CESO to CVED: Sustaining Canadian Aid Gains through a Local NGO

from The American Chronicle

Mike Banos

Donor countries have a soft spot in their hearts for small and medium industries. From manufacturing garments, to weaving crafts and making paper, molding pottery, baking bread, pastries and sweets, or processing meat products, Philippine small and medium enterprises may not be the biggest contributors to the economy but they are tops in generating jobs and alleviating poverty.

"They comprise more than 90% of all our enterprise in the country and if we can create a million to two million small enterprises and each one hires two to three people, we can create five to six million jobs with small enterprises," said Economic Planning Secretary Romulo Neri.

But a general lack of sustainability has hampered small and medium enterprise growth in the Philippines . Intuitive rather than proven business practices and policies generally characterize these "mom-and-pop" operations, so bringing them up to par in an increasingly competitive global market is proving quite a challenge. But the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) saw opportunities in the situation to make a difference.

"We have two kinds of assistance. One is focused at business support organizations and the other is CESO-BAP focused on individual companies and groups of companies who need special expertise like marketing, finance, production to help them grow their businesses," Canadian Ambassador Peter Sutherland said in a recent visit to a beneficiary enterprise in Cagayan de Oro.

CIDA's mandate is to to support sustainable development in developing countries, in order to reduce poverty and to contribute to a more secure, equitable, and prosperous social order.

CIDA's partners and stakeholders agree on the need to address persistent and high levels of poverty in the Philippines. The consultations recommended that a broad-based private sector, supported by a strong public sector institutional base, would contribute significantly to poverty reduction and sustainable development in the Philippines. By promoting greater private sector participation, employment opportunities and incomes of Filipinos would increase.

Strengthening the capacity of institutions and non-governmental organizations/peoples' organizations (NGOs/POs) would help the Philippines achieve a stronger public sector and civil society structure - two key elements for prosperity and sustainable development.

By helping create an enabling environment for private sector development and by sharing Canadian technology and skills in areas of mutual interests, CIDA's efforts are expected to result in increased employment opportunities and improved incomes in the Philippines as well as create and expand linkages between Canadian and Filipino private sectors. Through the Canadian Executive Service Organization - Business Advisory Project (CESO-BAP) assistance is given to Filipino entrepreneurs to enhance operations, generate higher income, and create more jobs.

"We provide business advisory assistance, basically in the areas of marketing, technology transfers, product development, organization, improvement and operating functions of organizations," said Timothy Moiket, country project manager for CESO-BAP. "We came up with an SME continuum to make us understand the distinct needs of enterprises."

CESO is a non-profit organization that helps to build proud independent communities. Over 3,000 distinguished Volunteer Advisers on the CESO roster share their professional experience by serving as mentors, advisers and trainers to our clients and partners at home and abroad.

"Within the confines of the project, we view business advise as an asset. Through our private sector development programming, we address the issue of poverty reduction through the creation of jobs. If businesses can be strengthened, if the delivery of business services can be strengthened, jobs can be created. Through creating jobs, you create wealth. By creating wealth, it works its way down to system individuals and poverty is reduced in some shape and form," said Tom Carroll, CIDA Head of Aid in a recent visit to SLERS.

But beyond giving business advise, CESO is making sure that Filipinos take an active role, and rise to the challenge of giving ample, doable and tested advice to their fellow Filipino entrepreneurs.

"We created a model which can replicate the kind of service that we provide but in a Filipino setting so, together with Philippine Business for Social Progress, we created a program called CVED" Mr. Moiket said.

CVED (Corporate Volunteers for Enterprise Development) is a business advisory program of PBSP in partnership with CESO and funding support from CIDA. Like CESO, CVED provides expert advice and technical assistance through Volunteer Advisers to micro and small enterprises to empower them to sustain their businesses and be net contributors for job generation and poverty alleviation.

Gil Salazar, PBSP executive director said CVED aims to be the sustainability mechanism for BAP. "We're tapping the corporate employees, primarily the employees of our member-companies to act as volunteers, volunteers as business advisors," Mr. Salazar said.

The convergence of the two programs had its most successful joint collaboration to date with SLERS Industries in Cagayan de Oro. BAP adviser Charles Gouett provided assistance in niche marketing and distribution strategies, while CVED advisor Oliver Tiu focused on developing sale strategies and a sales force for the client.

Although the two experts could not work together physically, they found time to meet in Davao with the client to formulate a general marketing plan with the BAP expert focusing on its ham and chicharon (pork rind crackers) while the CVED advisor focused on its daily meat products.

As a result of the collaboration, SLERS invested PhP1-million in new funds for a new plant for its chicharon production, another PhP2.5-million for its Expess Meals kiosk at a nearby mall, and another sales kiosk at the SM Mall of Asia in Manila. Sales increased from PhP2.7 million in January-April 2006 to P3.3 million in May-September 2006, and most important, thirty new employees were hired.

"We've developed new products, introduced them in the market, and consequently hired more people to produce and sell these products in our outlets," said Mercedes Mejia, managing director of SLERS Industries.

By transforming CVED into one of its core programs, the PBSP will continue the work started by CESO-BAP and molding it into a tool to complement its credit and livelihood programs. CVED will continue to strengthen its roster of volunteer advisers to continue delivery of business advisory services to small and medium enterprises.

"SMES are really out of the loop of management service providers in the economy largely because of their small size which make them more difficult to reach and interact with," Paul Dominguez, chair of the PBSP Mindanao executive committee said. "We noted a number of enterprises really need assistance to grow which is why PBSP has this program."

"It's gonna take a lot of hard work, sweat equity on the part of the organization. They have to know where they are, how to get there, come up with a plan, set their mind to it, assemble the assets, assemble the resources required to do that," Mr. Carroll said. "If one of them is CVED that would be great, but CVED cannot do it for them, they must be prepared to devote their time, their effort and energy to achieve their goals themselves."

To further ensure the sustainability of the success which the project has so far attained, CESO and PBSP are now preparing a detailed 3.5 year plan covering the last 18 months of the BAP and maximize the potential of CVED and two years of CVED post BAP.

"The plan will outline the folding in of BAP's operations into CVED, the human resource requirement, and the structure of CVED within PBSP," said Arun Bauri, CIDA development officer for Indonesia, the Philippines and South-East Asia. "It will also outline the funding and resources needed for the approval of the BAP project advisory committee."