Aboitiz Foundation steers projects to bigger impact on national dev’t

It was in 1988 when Aboitiz Foundation Inc. – the non-profit organization that implements the corporate social responsibility (CSR) projects of one of the largest and oldest conglomerates in the Philippines – was founded.

More than three decades later, the company wants to have bigger, deeper impact to the country’s national development, not just to its beneficiaries.

“For us, how do we contribute to national development and create impactful projects?” said Maribeth L. Marasigan, first vice president and chief operating officer at Aboitiz Foundation.

She said this as she revealed the foundation’s ambitious plan — to create a master plan that will integrate the social initiatives of all the subsidiaries of Aboitiz Equity Ventures Inc. (AEV) and make them more organized, area-based, and is more aligned with the Philippine Development Plan, the blueprint for the country’s development under the Duterte Administration.

The Aboitiz Foundation was incorporated to formalize the Aboitizes’ various social initiatives.

But even years before Aboitiz Foundation was founded, AEV has always been deeply immersed in the communities that they operate in, said Danilo Cerence, Aboitiz Foundation Assistant Vice President.

Aboitiz Foundation started with infrastructure and microfinance projects. Then it started granting scholarships.

In 1999, Aboitiz Foundation, then known as Aboitiz Group Foundation, Inc., became the first non-government organization (NGO) that was accredited by the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) as a donee-registered institution. With that accreditation, the company gained more partners, allowing it to implement more projects especially on enterprise development and disaster preparedness.

Right now, Aboitiz Foundation has nearly one million beneficiaries and more than 4,000 CSR projects.

“What we want to do is anchor on targets of the government. We want to align our goals to the Philippine Development Plan. It is more meaningful [if you have targets] like poverty reduction. So [we're identifying what goals] do we want to do to help reduce poverty,” Marasigan said.

Such plan will be implemented by Aboitiz Foundation under its Integrated CSR (iCSR) strategy, which transitions the Aboitiz Group's CSR toward a collective approach to achieve a more sustainable and inclusive impact.

Under the new iCSR strategy, Aboitiz Foundation will set up Regional Councils in Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao to put together all AEV’s business units’ CSR programs and work collaboratively towards the success of their respective programs.

“As we transition to an integrated approach to CSR, or the emphasis on a collective approach where resources and expertise are combined towards greater scale, we are working towards implementing holistic programs that cut across the program pillars of education, enterprise development, and the environment,” Marasigan said.

With this new thrust, Aboitiz Foundation is set to announce its 25x25 campaign that will rally all of the Aboitiz business units and its development partners towards building 25 good communities by 2025.

“That's what we are trying to do. We are doing our master plan. We’re scaling up and putting up the right matrix to measure the success of our programs,” Marasigan said.

The master plan, she said, will enumerate goals that aim to contribute to the national development. Aboitiz Foundation will target to reach these goals in five years.

As of now, Aboitiz Foundation sustains its operations through the contributions of AEV’s various business units, including Aboitiz Power Corp., Pilmico Foods Corp., AboitizLand, Inc.

The foundation's overall priority is to provide assistance for the communities where these business units are.

“We recognize that ‘doing good’ also contributes to profitability as we implement innovative and scalable solutions to address social challenges and help improve the productivity of value chains in our partner-communities and cooperatives,” Marasigan further said.

Aside from its ‘area-based projects,’ Aboitiz Foundation is also involved in Aboitiz Group’s largest CSR initiative so far, the Weather Philippines Foundation (WPF).

WPF aims to deliver critical and accurate weather forecasts to the Filipino community, with the hope of improving nationwide disaster preparedness, and timely response to variable weather conditions.

By bringing together the Aboitiz Group’s resources and network, and MeteoGroup’s technical expertise, WPF is poised to be the country’s premiere private weather information/content provider.

WPF plans to have roughly 1,000 automated weather station/devices installed across the Philippines.

“For Weather Philippines, we’ll align our strategies with the 25x25 campaign and collaborate with all our partners in ramping up our efforts for more actionable, program-based initiatives. We’ll continue to measure and quantify outcomes of our Weather Education Programs and reach more communities and organizations with our Community- and School-Based Disaster Risk Management training sessions,” Marasigan said.