4 GAME CHANGER
VOL. 6 ISSUE 66 • SUNDAY - MONDAY, JUNE 16-17, 2013
EDGEDAVAO
ENTREPRENEUR OF THE YEAR:
Jonathan Suy By EJ DOMINIC FERNANDEZ
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USINESSMAN Jonathan Suy saw the need for newspapers in banana plantations, so he sold old newspapers to banana companies during his college years. Now, Jonathan O. Suy is the winner of the Entrepreneur of the Year Philippines 2012 for Small Business Category for his Jomaray Pulp Packaging Company. In college, he observed that the banana business needed newspapers for wrapping the fruits. So did the
pineapple business. “From that point I saw the demand for packaging in the pineapple industry, that is when I started doing my packaging business,” he said. His main company, Jomaray Pulp Packaging Industries, manufactures environment friendly packaging materials for agricultural and food products, and for industrial accessories, out of recycled paper, by using pulp molding machines from Emery, Canada. When he was work-
ing in his family’s egg farm, he also saw a good opportunity for making egg trays out of recycled newspapers. He started out with a P500,000 capital in 1995 when he was still a college student. Today, his assets are worth P100 million from the five different companies that he owns. “We started out from scratch, and we developed our own machines,” he said. Now, his businesses include agriculture, poultry, and iceplants,
RATING MAYOR INDAY SARA
with 600 employees. He also cited the valuable contribution of employees in his winning the award, saying, “without our employees, we could not have operated the plant. He is grateful to his employees, especially those in the technical field, which is why he keeps encouraging them. The award-giving body of the Entrepreneur of the Year Philippines is SGV&Co Ernst & Young.
Focus more on children’s education, health, welfare By GREG G. DELIGERO
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HE social services delivered during the three-year term of Davao City Mayor Sara Z. Duterte were focused more on children’s education, health and welfare protection as may be gleaned from the mayor’s State of the City Address (Soca) delivered last June 11. Since the start of her administration, the city government has imbedded literacy components in various programs and projects of different departments and offices that earned recognition from the National Literacy Awards Council as the Most Outstanding Local Government Unit under the highly urbanized city category for three consecutive years. With these accomplishments, Davao City was chosen as the Philippines’ entry in the UNESCO International Literacy Prizes competition. The award-giving body recognizes member states and international non-government organizations that promote innovations in the field of literacy throughout the world. The city’s innovations include the Magbasa
Ta Program which has served more than 40,000 children in far-flung barangays. The program was further strengthened by the acquisition of one air-conditioned mobile library to cater to more clients in the communities. Beyond Access, an international organization of public libraries, has chosen Davao City as the only model recipient in the Philippines to develop public libraries, not just as a source of learning, but as a center of information for economic opportunities. “Programs for children are on top of the list from the time that I started serving as your mayor,” Duterte said. Based on the mayor’s Soca, Duterte’s administration gives specific attention to children in special circumstances, including children who need temporary shelter, children at risk and children in conflict with the law. To protect and promote the rights and welfare of children, the city government completed the upgrading of the Paginhawaan Drop-in Center for Street Children and
the Quick Response Team for Children’s Concerns. The facility is aimed at accommodating more children needing temporary shelter and providing them with a safer residential facility. It also recently completed the construction of one building, the first of several buildings in the design of the Davao City Children’s Village at Barangay Bago Oshiro, Tugbok district for children at risk and children in conflict with the law. Duterte said the village will provide rehabilitation services to help children become better individuals and prepare them for their reintegration back to their families and the community. “This will allow our City Social Services Development Office (CSSDO) to hold the children before they are released back to their families. This is in consonance with the recently passed Juvenile Justice Ordinance of Davao City,” she said. Duterte said the national government, through the Juvenile Justice Welfare Council and the Comprehensive
Juvenile Intervention Program, has recognized the city’s efforts in championing the cause for our children, and has partnered with the city government to further improve its programs for juvenile justice. Since 2010, the city government has also offered scholarships to youth and children with 521 initial beneficiaries. Duterte later on signed Executive Order 19 or the Expanded STEP Program to accommodate an additional 936 students in the succeeding school years until 2013. The scholarship is not only limited to students who graduated at the top of their class but also to those students who have the willingness and perseverance to complete their college education. Eligibility criteria were designed to accommodate more students, thereby maximizing the educational assistance fund. The program has so far produced 32 students who graduated with honors last school year. At the elementary and high school levels, the city government priori-
tized the construction of classrooms and the hiring of auxiliary teachers in the utilization of the Special Education Fund (SEF). Duterte said the Local School Board approved the construction of 139 classrooms for the period of 2011 to 2013. The teaching force in the public schools was also augmented with the hiring of 421 auxilliary teachers. Security was also strengthened by hiring 471 school guards, assigning at least one guard each for all 357 public schools in Davao City. To promote the health of school children, the city government and the Department of Education, in partnership with Fit for School Inc., constructed hand-washing facilities in all 285 public elementary schools. Duterte said the project promotes the simple and cost-effective essential health care program to address high-impact childhood diseases through the conduct of daily group hand-washing with soap, daily group tooth-brushing with toothpaste and biannual de-worming.
“Promoting basic hygiene practices thru a daily routine will result to lower prevalence of diseases, lower absenteeism and fewer malnourished children. The strategy saves the parents thousands of pesos in medical and dental bills and ultimately savings for the city government medical assistance program,” she said. The city government has also partnered with Jollibee Foundation and several private schools for the Busog, Lusog, Talino program, a five-year supplemental feeding program to selected public elementary schools in the city by way of monthly rice subsidy. The program is aimed to address the high incidence of absenteeism among public elementary school children attributed to hunger, sickness and malnutrition. For all its child-focused programs and projects, Davao City has recently won the Presidential Award for the Most Child-Friendly City in the country, a prestigious honor that the city last won 13 years ago.