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BY JULIO P. YAP JR.
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Youth poverty reduction challenge
THE future of any country lies on its young generation, whose visions and dreams have always served as rays of hope and confidence for a better, brighter and more promising tomorrow.
In view of this, the Villar SIPAG (Social Institute for Poverty Alleviation and Governance) launched the 1st Villar SIPAG Youth Poverty Reduction Challenge, a friendly competition among Filipino youth through social enterprises designed to help alleviate the poverty situation in the country.
Sen. Cynthia Villar, Villar SIPAG director, said they launched the competition to encourage the youth to pursue the vision for a poverty-less Philippines.
Under the competition, 10 Most Outstanding Social Enterprises with existing poverty alleviation programs will be named as winners. Each winner will be awarded with P150,000.
The Youth Poverty Reduction challenge is open to 16 to 29 years old college students, out-of-school youth, young professionals, social enterprise groups, young entrepreneurs, youth organizations, and other community organizations.
Social enterprises must have at least two to three youth members. All entries must be social enterprises which have been in operation for a minimum of one year.
Each entry shall go through rigid evaluation, comprehensive screenings, and rational project defense. Entries will be judged and selected by a panel of social entrepreneurs and socio-civic specialists.
Social enterprises should focus on, among others, food or agricultural products, recycling waste materials or agricultural waste products, green inventions / environment saving inventions / green technology, water / waste / energy solutions, rural and urban innovations, information technology, and livelihood development.
All entries must conform to environment-protection standards and should also address waste management measures in any social enterprise set-up.
Originality and uniqueness of the entry will be scrutinized (25 percent of the criteria).
Social enterprises must creatively demonstrate how they will solve the poverty problem in their communities.
Adaptability, or the ability of the enterprise to respond flexibly in any given community situation, will be 25 percent of the criteria, while sustainability, or how a social enterprise addresses a sustainable need and how that need will be fulfilled, will be another 25 percent.
The other criteria will be community upliftment, or how the social enterprise will help in uplifting the conditions of poor and urban communities/disadvantaged communities.
Judges will review all submitted entries and will select at least 20 entries in the Initial Screening Process. The semi-finalists will then undergo site evaluation and social enterprise model analysis and defense.
The 10 Most Outstanding entries will be picked from the list of semi-finalists. All decisions of the judges are final and non-appealable.
The Villar SIPAG office started accepting entries last October 1, 2016.
Application forms for the competition can be downloaded from the Villar SIPAG website (www.villarsipag.org). Accomplished forms should be sent to villarsipagyouth@gmail.com./PN
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