Why do I think the SoSa model works?

I have been telling people from when I returned about why I think we have added value to our client organizations and also learnt a lot ourselves. Below are the testimonials from the clients in the closing ceremony :

“It has been a great pleasure and privilege for our team to have had the SAP Social Sabbatical team with us for a month. To have a team of outsiders look into our business, and in this case a team of experts map our processes, is extremely beneficial to our growing organization. We are committed to ensuring that the seed that the SAP team has planted will be properly executed and by doing so, the help from SAP will extend to even the young adults that Messy Bessy will take in our program in the years to come. Lastly, having the SAP team with us for a month also opened the eyes of our young adults to the reality that we are all connected as humans, even if we live miles apart and come from very diverse cultures. The SAP Sabbatical is such a beautiful, inspiring and fruitful initiative that I personally wish more companies would follow suit,” said Krie Lopez, Founder of Messy Bessy. 

Speaking on the impact of the SAP Social Sabbatical, Jim Ayala, Chairman of Solar Energy Foundation Philippines said, “Millions of Filipino student are unable to study at night because their communities are unelectrified. The Solar Library program of StiftungSolarenergie – Solar Energy Foundation Philippines enables these kids to keep up at school by making solar reading lights available for them to bring home with their books. The SAP team helped us enormously by accessible by project managers and community partners across the country. The tool kit is community-friendly and culture-sensitive, which is important for acceptance and sustainability. Their work will really help us accelerate the roll our of our Solar Libraries!”

“The SAP Social Sabbatical was such a great experience for the Hapinoy Team at multiple levels. We were able to get he benefit of world-class talents helping us deeply analyze and strategize our social business model and operations, with very concrete outputs that can really help us catapult even further,” said Mark Ruiz, Co-founder and President of Hapinoy. “But more than that, their interaction with team was extremely invaluable – they have helped us think and reflect on Hapinoy and our individual work with new, fresh perspectives. We are very, very grateful to Yasar, Michelle, and Joerg – a group we affectionately call our “Magicians.”

“We are very grateful for our SAP fellows! Priscilla, Caroline, and Vineet were amazing partners and advocates. In the short time they have dedicated with us, we felt their dedication and passion. They provided us with process analysis and recommendations for sales and product design,” said Reese Fernandez-Ruiz, President of Rags2Riches, Inc.

Heart and Soul in Manila!

I am physically back in Bangalore  and really happy to see my family. But I feel like I left my heart and soul back in Manila. The nostalgia wave hits me and I can't stop ruminating about all the things I experienced there. Some of the alumni from the Bogota Social Sabbatical had told me of this feeling upon return where you feel like you cannot express your experiences in a way that others who haven't been on the same journey can understand. It's like you underwent such a special journey that mere words can't do it justice and you feel so disconnected back in your normal life.

Here are some of the changes I perceive after being back :

• The bed in your home is never as soft as the one in the hotel.

• You have this macro view of the world and always tend to look at the big picture and cannot comprehend the mundane day-to-day complaints.

• You try to find meaning in every action you do and while I get back to my regular job - I find myself asking " What's the real reason for me to do this? "

• While I am grateful for the experience and opportunity - it is still a little sad to acknowledge that its truly over. A small voice in my head tells me while you may meet some of the colleagues from SoSa Manila, you will never meet the entire group together.

Our Journey - A flashback!

We have come to the end of this beautiful journey. We had an amazing farewell from the Messy Bessy team - with the learners dancing on a Bollywood number , singing a Chinese song ,  doing a traditional Filipino dance along with a lots of food served with oodles of love. I was all teary-eyed and emotional and was really touched to see them put in so much effort for us. Krie and all the managers were very warm too and I will never forget this experience. We have tried to capture our journey in the above video.

Today was the closing ceremony at the SAP Manila office and this too was splendid. It was interesting to see the other teams with their clients and we all got a sense of the work the teams did. There was even a media event with local newspapers and TV channels interviewing Darren [ SAP MD, Philippines ], the social entrepreneurs [ Krie from Messy Bessy,Reese from R2R, Jim from SEF and Mark from Hapinoy ] along with Social Sabbatical speakers [ Vince, Priscilla , Kathrin and Yasar]. I felt like I was in one of those out of body experiences where you cannot believe what an incredible time you are having and you have these people in the same room - all saying and feeling similar things. It is truly incredible to witness inter-connectedness and a sense of being and feeling the same in-spite all the differences that diversity can bring.  I sometimes feel that I cannot do justice with words to express all that I am feeling! Maybe I can comprehend it all better when I return to my regular life. 

Ice skating rink, cats and the walking tree!

This was a busy week - we tried to spend as much time together as a group as well as tried to maximize the time with the client in order to give an end deliverable that is truly meaningful. Before the week started , I spent the Sunday afternoon with the girls - Michelle and Kathrin at the SM mall of Asia. Was a fun weekend - shopping, eating and generally hanging out. Was surprised to see a huge ice skating rink in the middle of the mall!

[ L to R - Clockwise ] Kathrin enjoying eating the Croissant, passion fruit tea at the mall, Band performing @ SM Mall of Asia , Real looking plastic Japanese food , Skating Rink

  

Bambi from Solar Energy Foundation organized a trip to Barbara's in Intramuros for us to experience the Philippine culture. There was good food and the dances were breathtaking. Vince managed to do the traditional Philippine bamboo dance blindfolded. We spent a nice evening pub hopping till late at night when trees on the street  started attacking DJ!That’s when we decided to call it a night and it is one of those evenings that will get talked about a lot by the group in months to come!

DJ and the attacking tree!

I found to my surprise that I have a second cousin ( who I had only met once in my life many many years ago while I was still in school ) who lives just a street away from our hotel in Makati. I visited them on Sunday night and found myself sitting in their living room for a few minutes with a black cat and small white kitten for company. I wouldn't say I love cats and being in the same room alone in a new environment with two of them was quite spooky. To add to the drama, the black one jumps on top of the dining table  and begins chasing the tiny kitten. I sat petrified while watching the cat bite and attack the little kitten. A small part of me wanted to save the kitten, but the fear of them kept me rooted to my corner on the sofa. In 5 minutes my cousin walked in and I was told  the cats were only  "playing" and that the little kitten will survive. I know for sure I am scarred and don't think I can say I am ok with having cats as pets!

Service Weekend

Tour of the Virlanie Homes
[L to R Clockwise] Najee showing us the playground, Babies and toddler home, Mobile School that goes to far flung areas and volunteers set up blackboards and teach children from that area, Bunkers for the kids, Art work by the children at the Drop in Center.

We are entitled to 2 free breakfasts at the Citadines Hotel and we decided to pack up our second breakfast everyday to give to the children of the Virlanie Foundation. This is a foundation in Manila that gives a reason for street children to smile. Andrie was kind enough to take us to this child caring institute, where we met Najee the campaign officer who took us on a tour of the place. The place that broke my heart was the toddler home where we met around 10 toddlers all longing to be hugged. As soon as we entered the room they all lifted their arms to be carried and as soon as I carried Angie - 3 yr old girl, she hugged me tight. Was really nice spending time with them , but was also hard to say goodbye. Some of them started crying when we left and it was heart wrenching to have to walk away.

Angie and I

Children at Virlanie

On Saturday morning we visited another organisation that works with children in the SOS Village. This village is nested in a typical "Village" setup in Manila i.e amidst the posh residential villa properties in Manila Alabang. We were allotted to houses and spent time with the kids from the house. The concept of SOS was unique for the fact that siblings were kept together and assigned to a house. This house is a decent property with a porch, garden and all the amenities of a normal household. The idea is to give the children a sense of belonging and normalcy so as to foster their growth and independence. We spent half a day with them and was fun to interact. Some pictures from SOS village:

Where's the imaginary line?

Our hand made "hand-sanitizers"

We worked in the production line for 2 hours making hand sanitizers - right from mixing, pouring to labeling the products. We mixed the secret ingredients - spilling some with our indextrous hands and getting jovially reprimanded by Jeff the production head. Vince was our power pourer - lifting huge containers with gallons of liquid for mixing. Was fun to stir all ingredients in and watch the chemical reactions. Felt like I was back in chemistry lab in high school! 

We moved to the labeling section and had to focus on putting the label straight and uniformly. We had a line on the bottle from which we had to start sticking the peeled labels. DJ was focusing and trying to label for a while before asking - "Where's the imaginary line?" . He wasn't able to see the tiny line even with his spectacles on. Kim, the learner overseeing our tasks, patiently smiled and helped us get the labels right.

I am pouring eucalyptus oil while Santa looks on suspiciously!

Assembly Line workers!

So much for uniformity in the labels! Guess who made this?

Juju-ing with Messy Bessy Team

How many hours have you clocked  at work today? The biometric attendance tracker for the young adults at Messy Bessy.

Do you wanna dance?

[L to R : Clockwise ] - Learner conducting the session, Paper on which the teams danced, Word Puzzle , Group huddled on the folded paper, dance in progress,team I was part of!

We did an interesting activity today at Messy Bessy's value session. Commitment is the value of the week and to show team commitment the organizers arranged for a paper dance game. Was great fun to start the day with a fun dance and a jumble word puzzle. Perfect combination for a fun filled morning!

RIPE Rules!

RIPE - House Rules!

I walked in at 7:45 am and saw the office abuzz with activity. The production room was being cleaned to accommodate 50 chairs and a make shift stage area was set up. The learners at Messy Bessy follow CLAY [CLean As You go] model and in a few mins the entire area was spruced up. The occasion was the quarterly family day celebration where the parents of the young adults are invited and the learners are awarded for their performance. It was a mix of award ceremony along with a parent teacher meeting to discuss and give feedback to the family members of the learners. Although most of the session was conducted in Tagalong, the pride in the eyes of the parents to see their children succeed was easily communicated. One of the learners brought her 1 year old daughter and it was heart warming to see her working so hard so as to ensure a more secure future for her daughter.
Award ceremony was followed by a special song rendering by the award winners and a packed snack for all present. The managers then interacted with the parents and answered any concerns they had. Was a morning very well spent!

[L to R -Clockwise] : Krie in magazine cover of Entrepreneur Nov 2014 edition, Krie addressing the families of learners on Family Day,Messy Bessy Team, Award winning learners, Messy Bessy learner with her child and her mother,Family Day gathering.

"What's your psychological income?"

Naughty Post-its at Messy Bessy!

I had a smile on my face when I heard the head of Finance at Messy Bessy say - "This is our projected income next year, but of course our psychological income is much more! " It was indeed a statement I have never heard in my corporate career and this is what is so special about social entrepreneurs who run profitable businesses to fund a social cause. Today the Messy Bessy team had an internal budget meeting - to which Krie was kind enough - to let us attend. It was interesting to see their KPI s have the learner's grades - to measure how successful they are in imparting education/values/on job training to the young adults in the program.

The value for this week was commitment and we each had to write down the answer to the below question :

What is your commitment for the week?

 Within the Messy Bessy office, I suddenly found the below poster in the "Gowning Room" [ I know strange name, but it is just the area where they don their production gowns before going into the production area ;) ]. Inspiration is never short here at the Messy Bessy campus!

Linggo 2 - The Work and Play week!

Personal Growth:

While going on the Social Sabbatical I thought long and hard on the things I hope to gain from this experience and had noted "improve patience" as one of the items. It was ironic that at Messy Bessy we were asked to share our experiences on patience. I am glad that this was the value on which we had to do some research and I do take-away a few learnings.

Vince shared his journey through pain, perseverance and commitment to complete the Great Wall Marathon of 2014. He talked of how after running 30+ kms the marathon, runners had to climb 5000 steps before continuing to run to the finish line. He explained the training and the personal sacrifices he had to make - before being in a physical and mental state - to be able to complete a marathon of this size and scale.I found a study by Stanford Researchers that explained how patience relates to success. And also a found a guide on how to cultivate patience which I shared with the learners. DJ presented what instances in his country test his patience and how he overcame them.

Work :

Messy Bessy asked us to look into their supply chain and inventory processes and suggest recommendations so as to improve their operational efficiency. We talked to Mira from Supply Chain, Santa from systems, Jeff from production, Arjay from purchasing,Glenn from Inventory, Ms. Soc from Finance, Analyn and Domnique from sales to understand the nuances of each process. We then documented the flows and played it back to ensure we understand correctly. We also worked a little bit on their IT wishlist and recommendations.Was overall a pretty structured and productive week. We hope to keep the momentum going next week as well.

Play:


Lesson learnt:
When given a helmet to wear while rafting, check if the size is ok before heading out! Successfully wore the helmet for 2 hours, but the minute I went under the waterfall, it flew away!


We did some travelling on Chinese New year and the weekend. We went to Intramuros, the oldest and historic part of Manila. Also did a trip to the Pagsanjan waterfalls in the Laguna district. This needed us to go upstream in snake boats and then raft underneath a waterfall into a cave. Was a spectacular ride and is the kind of place where natural beauty silences you and you soak it all up! Also visited the Legsapi Sunday Market and saw the Messy Bessy store doing brisk business.Here are some pictures from the weekend escapade:

Intramuros :  Manila Collectible Company

Legazpi Sunday Market : the stalls, Tamarind and Messy Bessy Bazaar

Bambike, Countryside, Buko Pie and the healing church!

Bamboo Rafts taking us to Pagsanjan waterfall

The scenic ride to the falls

All wet after the water massage!

Happy Chinese New Year - Gong Xi Fa Cai!

View of Manila from Skydeck, Bayleaf, Intramuros

We welcomed the year of the sheep in style from atop the skydeck - overlooking china town and watching the fireworks. We took the Bionondo Food Tour in the oldest ChinaTown in the world and ate our way through the narrow alleys and it indeed was a gastronomical delight! Our guide took us to five eating places and we gorged on dumplings,noodles, tofu,steamed buns, mango soup - to name a few - all the while exploring and learning a few historical facts of the area. The streets were lit with Chinese lanterns and the environment was indeed festive.

Lessons learnt for today:

#1 : Chinese food tours do offer vegetarian options and are not always bizarre foods ( like scorpion on  a stick! )

#2 : Jinx Rule : If you try to photograph the fireworks, they stop bursting them!

Sights from the Food Walk

Fireworks - thanks to Yasar for this capture!

Check in call 

Patience .. pass it on!

While researching on what to show the young adults on the virtue of patience - came across this fun video! Click on the link and learn the value of the day!

Working in the social entrepreneurship space for the very first time has opened my eyes to a new world.

# 1 - Client is really very patient and comes prepared to answer all our questions. We can be quite tedious and also sometimes repetitive, but they are generous with their time.

#2 - At MessyBessy everyone is a multi-tasker. Multi-tasking in my definition till now was to be able to do many "related" items simultaneously around the domain that you are working on. Here I see Ms. Marge - HR with Messy Bessy also serving as the teacher ( of many subjects ), counselor for the young adults as well as the administrator reaching out to social foundations and tracking the performance of every young learner here. Then there is Mr. Jeff who does R&D for new Messy Bessy Products while also running the production activities. He deftly manages the modules of Production planning, quality control as well as trains and monitors the performance of the learner working with the production team. He also set in place the process that Messy Bessy uses for production.

#3 - People work here because they really want to and they give this job their 100%. May be it’s the social angle that motivates them, but it's truly refreshing to see and work with such committed individuals.

#4 - Young adults who work here part time and also study, exhibit a great deal of courage. Many of them are living away from their family- all in the hope of a better future for them. Some of the stories of the sacrifices that they have had to make- actually break my heart.

#5 - There is collaboration in the true sense here. Everyone is working towards the same larger goal and you don't get to see one-upmanship here. I saw some learners from the sales team helping the logistics team.

I know for sure that in one week here I have learnt a lot - possibly much more than what I can give back!

Working Lunch + dinner = productivity!

 
 +

=

Output - Process Flows

Don't be fooled by the bottles of wine and beer you see in the pictures. Had a working lunch and dinner and was indeed productive. A glass of wine/ beer doesn't hurt. ;)

Country Presentations!

Vince , DJ and I made country presentations of China, the Netherlands and India for the young learners at Messy Bessy. Had a great time interacting with them and was interesting to hear their perspective! All set to kick start the value session on patience tomorrow.

DJ conducting a quiz

Vince showing the population of China!

Linggo 1 - The "shoal" week

We spent the week like a shoal of fish - all bonding and spending a lot of time getting to know each other. It is really interesting to understand the nuances of various cultures and also realize that ultimately all of us are pretty similar too. It makes you look up in awe at humanity in general and feel a sense of connected-ness with the world. I have had many conversations with Santa from Messy Bessy where when she explains how something works here in the Philippines I think - " That's exactly the same in India! " I also learnt a lot interacting with the Messy Bessy team to know how the social enterprises work and understanding the business model. We also got to interact with the learners this week and also made presentations for them on our countries.

This weekend we planned a trip to the Taal Volcano and Anilao. Although the itinerary required us to start at 6 am on a saturday, I must say the trip was well worth the morning nap sacrifice. We arrived at Taal volcano and took a scenic boat ride and a 30 minute ride on the horse to view the Volcano. On the way back, the same calm scenic boat ride felt like a ride in a hurricane. There was too much wind and waves with water splashing on us and we hadn't really worn our raincoats.I struggled to get my raincoat on in the wind,but failed miserably.We were fully drenched, but enlightened to know that when raincoats are given the next time, wear it!

Anilao, Batangas is located to the south of Manila and is famous for Scuba Diving. Caroline introduced us to this hilarious game over drinks called Head's up - Act it out and we spent many hours laughing and playing the game.

I had a list of firsts this week -

• Snorkelling - was kinda surreal to see the corals and the fish underwater. It was almost like time stood still here and I felt like an intruder 
• Trekking up a volcano within a Volcano
• Aha moment when you see your food that you think is vegetarian and realize it isn't!

Here are some moments from the week ( learning the art of Picture blogging from DJ ) :

Celebrating the love!

Lunch with DJ and Vince

Roomies - Caroline and Kathrin at Anilao

Taal Volcano

View of the ocean from the room

Visit to the Messy Bessy store!

                                                Head's up game in progress!

If only all business were like this

It's been a long week in Manila, hounding the good-natured and competent team at Rags2Riches with dozens of questions, trying to understand just what it is that they do, how they do it, and where they want to go. They are young and dynamic, coming from a variety of backgrounds, educational histories and career paths. It's a bit mindblowing to be in the company of young people who have already accomplished so much.

Simply put, in the upstairs offices the team runs from Reese Fernandez, the president, through her expanding sales and marketing team, through design, inventory and operations. Downstairs is the workshop, where bags and pillows from the rags to Riches Fashion and Living lines are assembled from R2R and indigenous communities' woven materials. The radio's on (Oh, won't you staaaaay with me? 'Cause you're all I need…). 

Half a dozen sewing machines are humming, zippers glint. A gang of young guys banter as they assemble with glue and leather. In the garden, a man snips carefully at a length of cotton knit to create bands for weaving. Each string then has to be knotted to the next, using a carefully studied technique designed to minimize the knot and make it invisible in the final weave. Brightly-colored stacks of woven panels and semi-finished bags grow on floors and tables throughout the day, excess threads snipped away to make a perfect product.

 

 

It's a family. Really. Everyone knows everyone else's news. At three in the afternoon, all work stops and a pick-up basketball game starts in the yard.

Even when we discuss the Rags to Riches commercial strategy, it's family. A formal strategy document leads off with,  "Before we go deeper into our strategic planning, we should always remember that no matter what we focus on, our purpose remains the same: lift Filipino Artisans out of Poverty." Artisans can earn a living through weaving, but they can also take courses that prepare them, with hard work, to become full-time artisans in the workshop in the main office, or R2R Ambassadors, manning one of the two R2R retail outlets in Manila.

There's also a career path for people like me. This week I became an official Rags to Riches Advocate, by becoming the happy owner of an R2R buslo, their fabulous over-the-shoulder basketweave bag. I could get used to this role.  J