(October 13, 2015, Albert Christian Go, Marketing Director)
We celebrate the current administration for its “Daang Matuwid” mantra to stamp out corruption and build a nation founded on the principles of integrity, transparency, and accountability.
After 6 years, we can’t deny the fact that politicians who were caught in scandals are now being put behind bars and banned from assuming public office. Hooray!
We should also applaud the fact that our nation has achieved investment grade status from Moody’s, S&P, and Fitch. In 2013, our country even placed 2nd in GDP behind China.
That solves our problems, right? Not so fast. Netizens are quick to point out issues as did I.
For one, the accumulated wealth of the rich (the so called taipans!) has not contributed to poverty alleviation. Our per capita income of Php 16,841 remains bothersome to most analysts because we haven’t figured out a way to address it sustainably.
We do realize that the Philippines, characterized by the booms and busts of a plethora of intervention programs, remains sluggish in promoting genuine reforms that would translate to equal distribution of wealth to the middle class and the poor.
We know that for every movie such as “Heneral Luna” or a silver medal for the “Gilas”, we get the “twerk girls” which infuriates every idealistic Filipino. Every night, we crawl through EDSA and wonder “hasn’t EDSA been on standstill since the 90s?”
At BeamAndGo.com, we don’t aim to solve every problem or resort to finger pointing. What we want is to cooperate with the government, establish partnerships with stakeholders, and focus on one group: helping OFWs and their families.
Our CEO, Jonathan E. Chua, was a product of the early migrants of skilled Filipinos in the 60s. His father, after graduating with a degree in Medicine at Far Eastern University in the late 60’s, decided to pack up and set his sights in the United States. And now, after 49 years living in the States and Singapore, he’s back to his roots.
The others in the management team, Mariliese Tan (Business Development), Ador Jao (Product Management), and myself (Marketing), have accumulated over 50 years of experience working overseas and have identified genuine problems OFWs face – lack of financial literacy.
To state our point, a recent study by the BSP shows that only 38% of OFWs have religiously set aside money for savings. While our digital gift certificate technology continues to advocate Filipinos to remit responsibly and focuses on basic needs, we understand that a multi-sectoral approach is needed in order for growth to be sustainable.
We recently rolled out our LearnAndGo financial literacy Workshop with LGUs – Iriga (click here to view the recap video) which was attended by 550 people, comprised mostly of the families left behind. We thank Mayor Ronald “Gang-Gang” Alfelor for supporting our initiative. And frequently, we are invited to speak at The Global Filipino Investors’ (TGFI) talks in Singapore.
On October 18, 2015, I will be sharing my personal advice on saving to OFWs in Hong Kong’s Mindanao Federation, while our marketing analyst Raizza Encinas will be at DTI’s Sorsogon talk on October 27, 2015 to share some of our best practices in social media to SMEs.
We are in the business of building a nation of financially literate Filipinos. If you believe in our mission and would want to partner or work with us, please feel free to contact me at albert@beamandgo.com. Let’s work together.