A Conversation with Colette

This month in Conversations, we talked to Colette Forma one half of the dynamic duo behind Moodies, a marketing company specializing in creating the mood necessary for the audience to be receptive to your message. Colette came to volunteer with G&G through SharePeople. She came to the Philippines for two power weeks and remains in touch with the team. Here we get up close and personal with Colette who gets candid about the best moment of her experience and what she learned about herself.

G&G: Tell us your Name, Age, Nationality, Occupation

CF: My name is Colette Forma. I was born and raised in The Netherlands and this year I reached the age of 40. Together with my business partner, I own and run Moodies: a company specialized in moodmaking. Our work fields are both internal and external communications and brand experiences.

G&G: What made you decide to volunteer?

CF: In April 2011, our company Moodies celebrated its 10th anniversary. A special moment that we wanted to mark in a meaningful way. Around the same time, we met SharePeople, a Dutch organisation that connects social entrepreneurs in developing countries with European professionals in various fields. They suggested we volunteer for Gifts & Graces, who were in need of a retail concept for their fair trade products. The question fitted my experience and after the first contacts with G&G I decided to volunteer at G&G for a period of two weeks. Short but intense!

G&G: As a volunteer how did you use your skills and experiences to help G&G and its advocacy?

CF: The task at hand was helping to develop a G&G fair trade retail concept. We knew very little about the fair trade business in general and had no knowledge of the Filipino market at all, so there was a moment of serious hesitation – were we able to do this? But the organisation and it's purpose were so appealing, we decided to give it a go. Only one of us could actually go to the Philippines, but together, we prepared the case from Holland as well as we could. We read G&G's business plans, talked to fair trade organisations and even worked out a detailed planning and budget format.

a sketch of the G&G store by Marge Obligacion,
based on the brainstorming

Soon after arrival in Manila, it became clear to me that the G&G team had an enormous amount of knowledge and some very good ideas about the future retail store. What I mainly did was facilitating the G&G team to make the right choices, by giving them focus and describing the 'next steps' as clearly as possible. One of the first things we did was a high-pressure, creative energetic brainstorm on the target group with the complete G&G team. It helped the team to imagine their target group as if it was an actual person. This way, they could make clear choices: in which kind of malls should the G&G store be located? What should the store look like? How should the products be presented? And how can we promote the G&G store and everything it stands for? It was the starting point for delivering the description on the personality of our future customer, the design proposal and sketches of the exterior and interior of the shop, and important details like wrapping, music and clothing of staff among many others. In the process, of course I added some of my ideas on retail and communication as well ;-)

Photos from Day 2. Above: Colette with the women of Kapitbahayan Candles.
Below: Colette with the newspaper bag makers of FCED Foundation

G&G: Did anything go wrong that seems funny now?

CF: At the end of each day, I emailed all documents to Holland. Thanks to the time difference, Monique was able to further work on the documents. This way, we could work for G&G around the clock! Towards the end Monique worked on the last changes in the Keynote presentation for the Board of Directors while it was night time in Manila. When checking my email in the early morning, there was no newer version of the Keynote there. Strange, because she knew we needed it in the morning. I couldn't do anything, because in the meantime she was asleep in The Netherlands. Just when I started worrying what happened, an email came in. Fact was that she finished the Keynote late at night, but forgot to mail it to me. She couldn't sleep tough and was wondering why. Until she realized! 

G&G: What are two interesting things about the Philippines that the average person doesn't know?

CF: That 'time' is a very flexible concept and that you can't survive in the Philippines without texting: it's a way of life!

Colette's images around Makati

G&G: What was the best moment of the entire experience?

CF: There where actually lots of good moments, working with the G&G team. The best? Probably presenting to the Board of Directors and realise they were not discussing whether the retail store should be opened, but what location would be best! That was a big compliment for a great team effort.

G&G: What did you learn about yourself?

CF: I guess I learned that with my drive and perseverance I can inspire others to really make things happen. I also learned that I find it hard to speak out my feelings and needs, certainly if this means that I have to confront others. Something to work on!

G&G: Why should other people do volunteer work? What did you gain from it?

CF: Volunteering at G&G gave me the opportunity of working in a different culture (with all the challenges and uncertainties that come with it). Getting to know the team in a very short time, finding out about their roles and personal challenges, facilitating brainstorms in a completely new setting, working together and motivating everyone to deliver their part of the process, seeing the enthusiasm grow. It gave me excitement and satisfaction to be able to do so, far away from my common workspace.  

Colette and Greg at the Legaspi Market
on Colette's first day in Manila

Within just two weeks, the G&G team and Moodies created a store design, a plan of attack, planning, budget and promotional plan. It has been very rewarding for us to add a little to G&G's final goal: giving power to social entrepreneurship and help marginalized individuals to become self-reliant and dignified members of society. We hope the first retail store will open its doors soon! 

Being 'out of your comfort zone' certainly makes you grow as a person! Just do it…

Colette Forma and Monique are the managing directors of Moodies, a Dutch agency that works for large corporate clients. We make sure our client's target groups are receptive to their message. Our moodmaking activities concentrate on internal and external communications, as wel as brand experience and interior design.

To learn more about Colette & Monique's time with G&G, click here. 

All about Upcycling

We talk a lot about upcycling in this blog but not a lot of people don't know what exactly upcycling is. If you're one of those people, read on!


To quote Cara Smusiak in her post about upcycling in Naturally Savvy, Upcycling is 

"taking something that you would otherwise throw out and finding a way to make it into something else." 

She explains further the difference between recycling and upcycling: "upcycling maintains or improves the quality of the materials" while recycling downgrades the materials that are reused.


There are a myriad of ways to upcycle different sorts of "waste". It's all up to your imagination and creativity to reuse something that could potentially have added to to the landfills! To get you started, here is a list of 100 Amazing Upcycling Ideas you could use.


If you don't want to start upcycling yourself, why don't you buy some of Gifts and Graces many upcycled products? Not only will you be helping the environment, you would also be helping provide a dignified income to one of our partner marginalized communities!


Here are just some of our upcycled products:

Upcycled from Scrap Fabric

 Retaso Pillow

 Coffee Sleeves

Retaso Travel Set: Passport Holder, Luggage Tag & Checkbook Holder

Upcycled from Juice Packs

Juice Pack Bag

Upcycled from Magazines

Magazine Tote Bag

Upcycled from Phone book Pages

Stackable Directory Bowls

Upcycled from Old Flour Sacks

Harina Tote Bag

To see more of our upcycled products visit our showroom/office at:

Unit 131 Milelong Building, Amorsolo St, Makati City

or call 759-2525 or email us at: marketing@giftsandgraces.com

PinoyMe's People - Powered Markets

Last Feburary 22, 2011 PinoyME celebrated it's 5th year anniversary at the NBC Tent at the Fort. On Feburary 22 to 23, PinoyMe also held the People-Powered Markets held at the NBC Tent which featured different social enterprises and companies who have successfully helped small producers integrate into their value chains.

Gifts and Graces was one of four social enterprises invited to showcase its robust value chain in greater detail. Gifts & Graces' exhibit featured how we are able to help our partners through design, capability building, and market access.

Newspaper bag makers and Mang Boy, an artist and painter from Barangay 849 in Pandacan from one of G&G's partners FCED Foundation, were the highlight of the exhibit.

On February 22, President Noynoy Aquino who was guest of honor at PinoyME's anniversary celebration, did a walk through of the different exhibits. While at the Gifts & Graces booth he admired our partners skill and craft and chatted for a while with Minda Rueda, one of our partner producers.

On February 23 Gifts & Graces Executive Director Greg Perez was part of a panel discussion on Social Enterprise: Doing Business with the Poor, joining Bam Aquino, Jim Ayala, Reese Fernandez, with Dan Songco PinoyME Executive Director facilitating. The panelists made brief presentations on their enterprises and answered questions on major challenges, profitability, and the legal structure for social enterprises among many others.

This exhibit was PinoyMe's way of promoting a new kind of people power. Congratulations to Dan Songco and the rest of the PinoyME team for an innovative and ground breaking concept!

Visit the People Powered Markets website and vist our Get Involved page on the G&G website to see how you can be part of this new revolution.

  

Also seen at the People-Powered Markets:

From left to right: Vic Roaring, APFTI Executive Director, Greg Perez Gifts and Graces Executive Director, Lani Concepcion Program Officer of PinoyME Foundation

 

 

Mae Paner, also knows as Juana Change, visits the G&G booth.

Defining Social Entrepreneurship

Last Friday, I received an invitation from the British Council to represent Gifts and Graces at a Round table Discussion on Social Entrepreneurship with Cliff Southcombe, a social entrepreneur and head of Social Enterprise Europe Ltd. Other organizations present were PBSP, Kids Foundation, Soup of the Day, Jollibee, Starbucks, SAGE Philippines, Messy Bessy Cleaners, Green Renewable Power Producers, Rags to Riches, and SEDPI. The RTD was facilitated by Arnel Casanova. One of the objectives of the RTD was for the British Council to have an idea of social entrepreneurship in the Philippines in order to determine how they can come in and help build social entrepreneurship in the Philippines and in the region. Cliff Southcombe shared that the UK experience has been more on cooperatives as social enterprises. In the Philippines, aside from cooperatives, other innovative social enterprises have sprung up as evidenced by the composition of the RTD participants. For a country with a lot of NGOs established to fill the gaps of government service, social entrepreneurship is a natural step. Much of the discussion however centered around the definition of social entrepreneurship. Being a "new" field the definition has not been well established. One view of social entrepreneurship is focused on the social entrepreneur who finds a problem and sets out to solve it with an innovative solution. My own definition of social entrepreneurship is more limited and was greatly influenced by J. Gregory Dees' Enterprising Non-Profits. For me a social enterprise is an enterprise with a social mission - the mission is the raison d' etre. Most social enterprises are non-profit organizations with specific advocacies such as education, health, access to water, access to electricity, and in Gifts and Graces' case providing livelihood support. One of the main differences between social enterprises and regular enterprises is that social enterprises invest in different interventions that regular enterprises don't regularly invest in. For example community organizing, capability building seminars, values formation talks. For social enterprises this is an integral part of their mission. One of the main challenges of this model is finding the funding for these interventions which go beyond operations. This is the challenge of financial sustainability, another hot topic at the RTD. Cliff defined sustainability as sustainability of the the of the social enterprises' impact. For me sustainability of impact and financial sustainability are not mutually exclusive though financial sustainability may be a medium term goal. To this I add looking at organizational sustainability which means that the enterprise has in place policies, structures, and systems that will ensure its survival and sustainability beyond the social entrepreneur that founded it.  In my view, in order to help grow and foster social entrepreneurship in the Philippines there must be an enabling environment which requires the involvement of government, civil society, and corporations. An enabling environment means just the right amount of regulation from the government, support in terms of tax breaks or exemptions, availability of funding for capability building interventions, fostering dialogue and cooperation, measuring impact, recording results for duplication and scalability. To this end, the British Council's and Starbucks support are very much welcome.  Thanks again to Felix Golez and Nanette Mercado for setting up the Round table Discussion.  Thanks for Cliff Southcombe for sharing his insights and experiences. I hope our paths will cross again as we all work together to promote social entrepreneurship in the Philippines. Cheers!