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Foreign
Investment & Social Responsibility
By Michael Alan Hamlin
June 16, 2003
When doctors
weighed and measured the height of 470 elementary school children
in Mauban, Quezon recently, only 18 met average weight and height
standards. Everyone else was malnourished to varying degrees, with
many in alarming condition. Ordinarily, those 452 children would
have little alternative to going hungry, becoming frequently ill,
and perhaps dying from the combined effects of malnutrition, weakened
resistance to disease, and neglect by ignorance
In the case of the children of Mauban,
however, there is some hope, thanks in part to the efforts of Quezon
Power, which operates a 470 MW power plant there (Full Disclosure:
Quezon Power is a client of my firm.). "Last July we started
a new Food for Thought program," Litz Santana explained to
me last weekend in Mauban, "aimed at fighting malnutrition
and improving learning among the poorest students in one of our
local schools."
Ms. Santana said that many - and
maybe most - of these children have never eaten a healthy breakfast
before school. "If adults can't work on an empty stomach, how
much more so for these children," she said. "We started
this program with 73 children and ended the year with almost 150,
and witnessed dramatic improvements in their scholastic performance."
To give you an idea, however, of
the mindset Ms. Santana and her colleagues are up against in their
efforts to help, she told me that parents actually advise their
children not to eat too much, lest they be taken off the Food for
Thought program. While the company hasn't quite figured out how
to handle that dependency issue, it is conducting other programs
designed to equip Mauban residents with the knowledge and skills
they require to live productive lives.
Like the Food for Thought program,
many of these initiatives are built around education. "Education
is the greatest social equalizer in our society, and such a distinct
advantage for children, so we are currently providing 27 youth full
scholarships to pursue college educations." The scholarship
program covers all school expenses, including room and board, and
other living expenses. Students compete for the scholarships by
taking qualifying examinations which are evaluated by an independent
contractor. All that is required of a student to keep the scholarship
is a passing average.
The company also offers special classes
for teachers. "This year, we brought together dozens of teachers
from different Mauban schools for eight half-day Saturday training
sessions in English proficiency," Ms. Santana explained.
Quezon Power's corporate social responsibility
programs are divided into four areas of assistance: education, health
& sanitation, skills development & livelihood, and the environment.
Sometimes, there's an overlap. For example, the Food for Thought
program involves students' mothers in the preparation and cooking
of the food which is then brought twice daily to the students. By
learning sanitary methods of food preparation and storage, mothers
also acquire the knowledge to better provide for the health of their
families.
The Food for Thought program isn't
the only area where surprises crop up, however. When we toured the
plant site last week security director Mike Enriquez pointed out
a growing "informal" community that had encroached on
the company's site. The company isn't using the area, and to improve
conditions there built an outdoor toilet with separate facilities
for men and women. This also had the additional benefit of protecting
the river from pollution. However, a losing candidate for mayor
had sand poured into the toilet, destroying it, apparently in retaliation
against the community for voting against him.
One of the best indicators of the
seriousness with which the company views its work in Mauban is the
quality of people it has assigned to community development. Edwin
Faigmane is the junior member of the team, and left the promise
of a medical career to do development work. "As medical students,
we would go into the field to work in poor communities," he
told me. "And I quickly found that working to help uplift these
communities was more rewarding to me than actually practicing medicine."
Faigmane conducts what are called
"Mother's Classes," which is the venue for teaching family
nutrition, budgeting, and household management. Concurrent to the
work that Faigmane does in Mauban, he's pursuing a doctorate in
business administration from De La Salle University. What strikes
you about the young man is that he could be working in some Ayala
Avenue company if he wanted to. Instead, he chooses to be in Mauban,
helping those who obviously need him more.
Branding guru David Aaker says that
corporate social responsibility pays off in very tangible ways for
corporations, and research shows a strong positive correlation between
brand equity and social investment. Some might argue that this suggests
less than noble objectives by companies with strong corporate social
responsibility programs, like Quezon Power.
But in meeting those on the line
who deliver the services, it becomes very clear that this is a job
that you have to love to do. And these guys do.
(Michael Alan Hamlin is the managing
director of consultancy TeamAsia and the author of three books on
Asian economies and companies. His latest book is Marketing Asian
Places, of which he is a co-author (Wiley, 2001), and he is currently
at work on High Visibility: The Making and Marketing of Asian
Professionals into Celebrities. Write him at mahamlin@teamasia.com.).
Copyright © 2003 Michael Alan
Hamlin. All Rights Reserved.
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