Photo courtesy of Dylac

By Mark Ruiz

The humble sari-sari store is the smallest kind of store in the Philippines, but it can also be one of the most powerful.

It’s normally started by a simple Nanay from a humble background who wants to augment the family income. After all, the sari-sari store is a relatively simple business to start. It’s home-based, which means that there’s no rent nor major construction expenses. In most cases, it’s literally a hole in the wall.

All the Nanay needs to get started is a little capital–just a couple of thousand pesos will be enough to buy the initial goods. These items are then sold with a little margin, more inventory is bought, these in turn are sold, and so on and so forth. The virtuous cycle of sari-sari store retailing has begun.
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No, that’s not CR as in Customer Relations. It’s CR as Filipinos know it—Comfort Room.

It seems Filipinos use this unique term for the bathroom. The British call theirs the loo, while Americans call theirs the restroom or the toilet.

Now how’s your establishment’s CR? Believe it or not, CRs are now being reviewed in CR Diaries, a unique section of the online city guide Spot. Those that look nice, clean and smell good are praised, while those that need improvement are singled out.
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SAY MARIKINA and one of the first things that comes to mind is shoes. It’s no secret that Marikina-made shoes are of good quality. Former First Lady Imelda Marcos has thousands of them, as can be seen from the shoe museum in the city. Marikina is the shoe capital of the Philippines.

The shoe industry in Marikina was said to have started in 1887 by Don Laureano Guevara, also known as Kapitan Moy. According to the Marikina city government website (http://www.marikina.gov.ph/PAGES/history2.htm), Kapitan Moy bought a pair of imported shoes and asked his workmen to duplicate them. Soon, many other residents learned shoemaking and the rest is history.

The website also says that as of 1983, 70 percent of shoe production in the country can be traced to Marikina. Shoes from Marikina have also penetrated the foreign markets.
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THESE DAYS, many people work in a nontraditional way. Just when most office workers are braving the Edsa traffic on weekday mornings, these people are at home brewing coffee, dressing up and getting ready for work a few feet away from their bedroom. They’re the work-at-home people, and their numbers are growing.

With today’s technology, more and more jobs can be done anywhere, not just in the office. You can sell just about anything from home, and perform services for clients from bookkeeping and marketing consultancy to graphic design and tutorials as long as you have the basics—a phone line, Internet connection, and a computer.

There’s another item I will add to this list of basics: self-discipline. With no boss looking over your shoulder, you as a home entrepreneur should be disciplined enough to do what you’re supposed to do—even if a replay of your favorite TV show House is on and the cool “bed” weather these days makes you want to go back to bed to sleep some more.

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By Lauren Wong*

I came to the Philippines ten years ago, and all I can remember are the white-sand beaches of Palawan. It was the most beautiful place I had ever seen, and I imagined the rest of the Philippines to be just as gorgeous when I boarded a plane bound for Manila. My summer internship with Ashoka Philippines would last for two months; I found that natural beauty abounds, but not in the sprawling mega-metropolis where I live and work. The city, like so many others, is a hub of urban pollution. Luckily for me, there’s life outside of the city limits.

Aside from interning with Ashoka, I got to spend some of my weekends in non-urban areas. Trekking up Mount Pinatubo, planting trees near a dam in Zambales, and spending an afternoon in an isolated village in Negros Occidental reminded me of the breathtaking natural beauty of the Philippines. In those little villages tucked in the folds of mountains, people live in communion with their surroundings. Villagers fashion umbrellas out of palm leaves, make useful rags out of tattered clothes, and let no scrap of food goes to waste. The ones I’ve met still remember how to live with the earth, not simply on top of it. That kind of mentality stands as such a contrast from the lives most of us urbanites live.

We need to remember what it feels like to not pollute the earth. As climate change becomes a more present danger, we (being Filipinos, Americans, and every other citizen of the world) have got to reconnect with our environment. Some of that starts small, like bringing cloth bags when shopping or, if not, use all of those plastic bags for garbage cans. We could put pride in Filipino-grown food rather than preferring goodies from Switzerland. We could make a conscious effort not to litter and demand a comprehensive recycling program. The biggest environmental concerns here in the Philippines happen to be large structural issues like diesel-belching buses and inefficient energy grids, but that shouldn’t dissuade the average citizen from trying to do their part. People and communities around the world are finding ways to “do their part”, and the Philippines should see if others’ innovative models can be applied here.
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