Ayala's seed fund to support youth leaders in Butuan

IN A bid to help the youth leaders of Butuan City, the Ayala Foundation, through its LeadCom (Leadership Communities) program, handed a seed fund to support their community development projects.

LeadCom is a yearlong program that empowers community-based youth and youth organizations to identify urgent needs of their respective communities and to help them develop, implement, and sustain projects that address these needs.

“LeadCom is under the umbrella of one of the major advocacies in Ayala Foundation when you speak of community leadership,” Ayala Foundation President Ruel Maranan said.

“So happen, Butuan has the youth as one of their key resources in this program, therefore we’re concentrating with them together with the local government unit, the office of the mayor and the SK (Sangguniang Kabtaan) Federation,” he added.

Last May 8, at the Butuan City Hall, Ayala Foundation handed a seed fund worth P200,000 to the SK Federation and LeadCom youth leaders.

The seed money, which came from both Ayala Foundation and the City Government of Butuan, will be used to jumpstart community-identified projects in communities the leaders come from. These youth leaders will enable implementation in their respective communities.

“The key here is really pre-identifying the compelling needs of the community, and therefore, by doing so, yung suitability of the solutions will also be championed or co-championed by this youth leaders under LeadCom program,” Maranan said.

“We’re trying to drive the value proposition of really challenging the community, in this case the youth, to determine the compelling needs, and therefore, the suitable solutions will also be part of how they would be addressing these projects in their respective communities,” he added.

Some focus of these projects include caring for the environment, entrepreneurial opportunities, widening training and employment options, as well as improving health and wellness through steering the youth away from vices.

According to Maranan, they selected Butuan City as part of their LeadCom program as its City Government and the Ayala Foundation is “aligned at looking at their youth as key resource to be able to address not only the emerging future but the disruptive future.”

He added that its also the openness of the Butuan youth and its local government unit on new ways and means to work and address the challenges of the present and the near future.

“So that is the very key factor, the openness of the local government unit, supported by an established SK Federation, a working federation at that. And more than anything, the engagement of the youth, because other areas might have obviously youth as well but how open are these young people to these kinds of opportunities?” Maranan said.

“So putting all these factors together, come into interplay, pre-determine the success of the projects,” he added.