Interview with Initiative Participants: The Initiative PH (TIPH)

We are in conversation with members from The Initiative PH (TIPH): Joaquin Consing (Jake), the head of Project Hatid Kapatid, John Lazaro, the Operations Lead on Project Hatid Kapatid, John Palima, head of Department of Marginalized Community, and Raphael Canalita, a co-head for Project Pagsibol. Through this interview, they take us into further detail on their work, their experience with proposal writing, joint value creation and lessons learned.

Interview conducted by I4A team member Saloni Wadhwa.

Saloni: First of all, let's talk about The Initiative PH - how was it founded and what is the major goal of the organization? Could you also describe the organization’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic?

TIPH Team: The Initiative Philippines (TIPH) is a youth-run, non-profit, volunteer organization that coordinates relief efforts and organizes sustainable programs for poverty-, calamity-, and conflict-ridden areas and communities in the Philippines. TIPH was initially founded in 2017 by high school students as a drive to help people displaced by conflict. Since then, it has grown from just being just a high school club a full-fledged organization that has members from different schools and universities. The main goal of The Initiative Philippines is to provide diverse, community focused humanitarian relief, along with assessing the situation of communities in need, so that there is a transition to long term development assistance. This allows empowerment of communities at the grassroots level. 

Specifically during the COVID-19 pandemic, the three main projects that emerged were Project Hatid Kapatid, Project Lumad, and Project Pagsibol.

Project Hatid Kapatid is a youth volunteer effort organized to provide financial aid to drivers of ride-hailing apps, taxis and delivery apps in Manila affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. These communities tend to be the most affected as they do not receive steady aid from the government or their companies, as they are a significant part of the gig economy. TIPH in collaboration with civil society partners work towards collecting aid and showing true stories behind the statistics. The project,eventually wants to work with the policy makers and companies in the field to come up with real and lasting solutions so that drivers are better protected in the future.

Project Lumad is one that advocates for the Lumad students’ right to claim safe education by supporting the Bakwit school through fundraising money to provide food packages and hygiene kits to 111 students and resident teachers, thus supporting them through the COVID-19 pandemic.

Project Pagsibol is a donation drive by TIPH in partnership with The Scarecrow PH, to provide relief goods to farmers of Nueva Vizcaya, who haven’t been able to sell their goods due to the pandemic. The prject’s main long term goals include giving helpful tips to farmers on how to market their goods and improve their agricultural methods.

Saloni: Could you talk more about the proposal you wrote for the I4A Africa COVID-19 Initiative - how was the writing process and what were your main concerns, if any, during this process, and how did you overcome them?

TIPH Team: We believe proposals are an integral part of social impact work. Our writing process usually involves a member who facilitates the writing process by scheduling calls where there is collaboration in real time. So, the key concern was to work around everyone’s schedules to find times where the whole team could work together bring their different ideas and thoughts to the floor. Along with these group meetings, we work on specific paragraphs individually based on the assignments discussed during the calls

Saloni: As a sub-question here, what do you think young entrepreneurs fall short on when they work on a proposal and how can this be improved?

TIPH Team: Our submission is based on experience, since we already did the actual projects and we have tangible knowledge to back the impact that we have garnered. So, our advice would be to ask yourself once you start conceptualizing the project, whether you can start actually doing it. If you this is possible, then do it! Don't be afraid if you haven't fleshed out everything. What's important is to start and to actually commit to it. For example, with our three teams, we were afraid at first about how we were going to further expound on the post-pandemic response and how we were going to transition from just giving these communities temporary relief to longer-term assistance. In fact, we are not sure how to do that yet, but we decided not to let hesitations stop us from writing the proposal down and to keep learning along the way. We strongly believe that if you work with others and collaborate with the community, the solutions you need will appear organically. We also believe that understanding the context of what you're doing is incredibly important. 

That said, we also believe that it is of utmost importance establish a solid framework for the challenge that you’re working on. While we may not know all the details as discussed earlier, creating a basic framework gives you the “how” to help target communities. For one of our projects, we started off with a weak proposal and we honestly didn't know what we actually wanted to do. We knew who we wanted to help, but we didn’t know how to go there. 

Our final piece of advice is that social entrepreneurs need to perform the grunt work of market research or social investigation. You have to work extensively at the ground level, and gain the trust of the community that you’re trying to work with. Market research provides essential context and improves the collaboration with the communities that are trying to be helped. 

Saloni: Let's now move from conceptualizing to the implementation - what have been or will be the major concerns when moving from the written proposal to actually implementing the projects, how did or will you work on combatting them?

TIPH Team: When transitioning from planning to execution, the most important requirement is commitment. The only way to really impact the community is through continuous effort. Often times, people tend to have many ideas at the beginning, but then along the way people stop investing as much time and effort into the project. So just to reiterate, it's always good to just be committed because you can have all the ideas in the world and you can have all the resources within your reach but, if you don't have the determination to actually use these to fuel your project then nothing will happen. 

We also believe that understanding your market is incredibly important when it comes to overcoming the challenge of how to reach out and contact communities in the first place. For us, since the project was a quick response, we really needed to get rolling as soon as possible. So, we had to learn a lot along the way and the research had to go along with the project itself. However, if the project is not specifically quick response, then it would be more conducive to do research without having to rush into the project.

Saloni: It seems that a lot of your plans had to be very quick because the pandemic just happened so suddenly. So, how has COVID-19 influenced your way of thinking and worldview, especially in terms of the initiatives you are working on/plan to work on?

TIPH Team: We believe that there is a very clear need with this pandemic, not just in the Philippines, but also globally, of a serious systematic macro response from the state and international bodies. Now more than ever, there is a call for a deeper dive into policy discussions and everyone does need to be involved as everyone is affected. Especially due to the pandemic, there should be a great emphasis on getting into every possible discussion in every avenue. Be annoying, don’t just sit quietly – be a part of the bigger discussion.

Further, the COVID-19 crisis has shown us that if there are inadequacies in societal infrastructure, we have an obligation to help and do our part. We feel that this pandemic has brought out several brilliant ideas to help people, but in a restrictive sense because there are many limitations in place – like the flower that blooms in the face of adversity.

Saloni: As you know, Ideas4Action is focused towards providing resources fo Africa’s COVID response. What are the key positive and negative lessons from your projects in the Philippines that  can be relevant for Africa's COVID-19 Issue?

TIPH Team: We've recently been on doing research on refugees and displaced people due to Project Lumad, so we recognize that many parts of Africa also have refugees and internally displaced people. While the causes of displacement might vary from country-to-country, an important lesson is navigating the political situation and helping displaced people. One positive lesson we’ve learned here, that can be applied, is for a  call to action through social media to garner support and raise awareness.

While the contexts in African countries and the Philippines may be different, we can offer a different mindset to deal with the problem. Instead of first partnering up with international NGOs or large corporate entities, the mindset in the Philippines is to engage the civil society at the grassroots level. In fact, coming from the Philippines and over to Africa, where there are a lot of macroeconomic trends that are very similar, including those of the informal sector and labor arrangements, we think with that the Philippines civil society model can offer a fresh solution.

Finally, we strongly believe that the creation of social impact is driven by what the community wants in terms of development and prosperity, it has to come from the ground-level. Seriously conversing with communities, building links and helping them articulate their needs, is the most essential. As an organization, we do establish this kind of personal connection with our beneficiaries, we understand their family situation, and even their small preferences, like the kind of biscuits they like with their coffee. 

Saloni: Finally, could you comment on the importance of joint value and knowledge sharing of best practices and lessons learned?

TIPH Team: The more complex the project becomes; the more actors are involved. The more actors in sectors that become involved, the more impact the project itself will deliver. Hence, collaborating and sharing best practices with people and getting them to work with one another is the best way to grow a project and increase its impact. Further, consult with the people that you empowered to find ways that you can deliver their needs. 

To conclude, compassion is of utmost importance – we share the knowledge of compassion with everyone else and thus it functions like a currency globally. We work with a lot of people in the social impact sector and sometimes we don't really remember their names, they just become words on a list. But we think especially in a time like this, where we are all isolated, it is essential to keep up with them and humanize the work that we do. Always remember that the people that you deal with are real humans and in another world,  they could be doing the work that you're doing and you could be the person they are helping out. 

Read more at: https://theinitiativephblog.wordpress.com/