CEMEX-TEC lauds Filipino innovativeness
Celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, CEMEXTecnologico de Monterrey Center for Sustainable Development is all set for the CEMEX-TEC Award 2020 Edition — with a few changes in accordance with the current global pandemic. Over the years, 22,500 people around the world have benefited from a total of 128 winning projects from 74 countries, including the Philippines.
The award has since helped Peace Crops to widen its reach across the entire province.
“This year, we celebrate ten years of the CEMEX-TEC Award, and we are also ten years away from achieving the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN. Through this award, we continue to recognize and collaborate with agents of change who are also working towards the same goals of the 2030 Agenda,” said Martha Herrera, Corporate Social Responsibility director at CEMEX and director for the CEMEX-Tecnologico de Monterrey Center for Sustainable Communities.
Last year, Philippines’ Robert de la Serna’s project called Peace Crops won the award for the Communitarian Entrepreneurship Category 2019 Edition. The Peace Crops aims to promote agro-enterprise activities for the youth in Lanao del Sur amidst the threats of war.
In 2017, a group of militant terrorists attacked the City of Marawi causing excessive loss of lives and damage to properties. With the aim to bring back normalcy and provide livelihood, Robert’s winning entry focused on social entrepreneurship.
“We took and adopted a community and that actually started the ideation to go beyond relief and help them with their rehabilitation through agricultural productivity,” De la Serna said. “People were losing their jobs, their livelihood, that’s when we thought perhaps it’s time to change the paradigm. Instead of building arms, let’s build farms.”
The award has since helped Peace Crops to widen its reach across the entire province.
Together with some global bodies championing entrepreneurship and social innovation, the CEMEX-TEC Award grants organizations an opportunity to present their high-impact projects and proposals on sustainable development and social innovation. The objective of this award is to enhance the well-being and quality of people’s lives through the initiatives of diverse groups worldwide.
CEMEX-TEC Award has four categories, ensuring an array of applications globally — transforming Communities Category aimed at graduate and postgraduate students with proposals that involve sustainable community transformation; social Entrepreneurs Category for entrepreneurs with projects that create social impact and systemic change; collaborative Action Category is for organizations whose social impact projects are implemented through partnerships with at least three sectors of society, and community Entrepreneurship Category intended for community-based organizations with sustainable projects that solve the problems of their community.