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!