Mario Deriquito - Director For Ayala Foundation; Project Director of GILAS

History and culture tells that the Philippine society is able to rise from   the quagmire… through collective action.

And Mario Deriquito, director of Ayala Foundation’s Center for Social Development, believes so. 

“We have this capability to be heroes to each other, the capacity for collective heroism,” said Mario.  “We have shown that in EDSA.  We have shown that in projects like Gawad Kalinga and Habitat (for Humanity).”

What we need, he stated, is a vehicle to deliver or manifest the capacity to be one for others.

Mario’s involvement with the Ateneo Student Catholic Group throughout his college years opened his eyes to volunteerism and being involved in the community.  Today, he is actively engaged in AFI as head of eight of its projects, one of which is the ICT education-veered consortium GILAS (Gearing Up Internet Literacy and Access for Students).

GILAS aims to connect more than 6,000 public high schools to the internet.  Since 2005, it has connected about 1,800 schools around the nation. 

In this Greater Good Philippines interview, Mario talks about GILAS and his role as director at Ayala Foundation.  He also shares how he is able to handle his 12-hour work day and tells about what he considers his greatest achievement in life, which has helped more than a dozen parishes in their fund-raising efforts.

All these and more only here on Greater Good Philippines.

Jay-R Patron:  Will you state your name and designation?

Mario Deriquito:  My name is Mario Deriquito.  I am the director for the center for social development of Ayala Foundation.  And I also concurrently serve as the project director of GILAS, which is a social consortium project that aims to bring the internet to all public high schools.

Jay-R Patron:  When was GILAS founded?

Mario Deriquito:  GILAS was founded in 1995.  It was launched in the occasion of the Global Filipino Conference last January, 2005.

Jay-R Patron:  What are its mission and vision?

Mario Deriquito:  Actually, the mission of GILAS is simple.  It’s to bring the internet to public high schools around the country so that we can provide public high school students access to a global learning environment.  Because we believe that if we don’t do this, the Filipino youth, especially the Philippine public high school students will be left behind by other young people around the world.

Jay-R Patron:  Why is it important to provide IT education and computer literacy?

Mario Deriquito:  First of all, the internet has become more and more part of our daily lives.  For example, more and more government services are becoming more and more availability through the internet.  Even job application, employment opportunities, are becoming more and more available through the web.  Even business transactions, even your access to music and entertainment is becoming more and more available through the web.  In other words, the internet is becoming more and more part of our daily lives.  And if this trend continues, those who do not have access to the internet will be left behind.  We think that the best way to introduce the internet is through the public school system.  As it is right now, the digital divide, or what we call information poverty, is very much pronounced in the public school system.  When GILAS started in 2005, only about 40 percent of the public high schools have access to computers, and only about six (6) percent had access to the internet.  Because it was so big a problem, we thought a group like Ayala Foundation alone cannot do it by itself.  So we decided to form a social consortium consisting of 23 companies to undertake this huge task—connecting all the public high schools to the internet. 

Jay-R Patron:  What are the challenges and pitfalls of educating the Filipino in general, not just the youth, in IT?

Mario Deriquito:  One of the challenges that we have faced is the challenge of infrastructure.  When we were just starting we knew that about 800 of the 6000 public high schools had no electricity.  How can you provide computers and internet to those schools without electricity?  Second was during that time, we also knew that about half of the public high schools could not be reached yet by the internet because the telecom companies in the country were not yet able to reach the remote areas.  When we were starting, when we were planning in a five-year horizon, we thought that over the years maybe access to electricity will improve and access to the internet will improve as the telcos do their roll-out but we found out that it was not as fast as we expected.  For example, now, after wiring close to 2000 schools, it’s becoming more and more difficult to find schools where there are telco infrastructures.  We are resorting to other means like wireless technology because DSL is becoming more and more rare.  There are for example whole provinces without telco infrastructure like the province of Aurora, and to a large part, the province of Palawan.  Those are the challenges of infrastructure.  The other one is, because we decide to use the public school system as our platform for educating the Filipino youth in IT, and one of the problems that we encountered was that the DepEd, the curriculum of the Department of Education as far as IT is concerned is not yet that well developed.  For one thing their curriculum is based largely on computer literacy rather than information literacy.  Even if we provide the internet to public high schools, we find the internet competing with lessons like Word processing, Spreadsheet, PowerPoint presentation.  So there’s a problem with regards to the curriculum.  The other challenge is sustainability.  Because our resources are limited, we can only provide schools with what we call starter sets—10 computers, a server and free access to the internet for one year.  After a year, it now becomes a challenge for the school to sustain the operations of the internet laboratory.  For example, they have to find the resources to pay for the electricity, to pay for the monthly service fee of the internet.  Later on they find it hard to find resources to upgrade the hardware.  The question of sustainability and resources also come in to the picture.  Those are the challenges.

Jay-R Patron:  Do you think the formation of a government branch, the DICT, will be able to address this problem?

Mario Deriquito:  I think the formation of a government office like the CICT, the Commission on Information and Communication Technology, will help provided that it will be given a very clear mandate and then it will be given adequate resources.  Like the CICT now, as far as I know, its main program as far as educating the citizens in communication and information technology through what they call the community e-Learning centers.  That’s pretty much the same thing, similar to GILAS, and in many cases, they also use the school as platform.  It’s quite similar.  I’m sure the CICT, if the approach is like that, will encounter the same problem as what we encounter.

Jay-R Patron:  Let’s move over to you as a professional.  What is an ordinary day at work to you like being a director of Ayala Foundation?

Mario Deriquito:  An ordinary day for me?  On a daily basis I have about five or six meetings.  In Ayala Foundation, I handle about eight major programs under the center for social development.

Jay-R Patron:  And GILAS is just one of them?

Mario Deriquito:  GILAS is just one of them.  We have this relatively big project in Mindanao.  We call it Education and Livelihood Skills Alliance with funding from USAid.  And we are tasked to prepare 98 barangays from the ARMM area… prepare them for projects in education, out-of-school youth development.  We are working with other organizations like the Philippine Business Association, Petron Foundation, International Youth Foundation, and they’re the ones that implement the other projects but our task is to prepare the barangays.  It’s a tall order for us.  I also oversee a project called Text-to-Teach.  It’s another ICT project this time for public elementary schools in remote areas and the objective is to bring materials on math, science and English to remote public schools using the 3G technology, 3G mobile phone.  It’s a technology developed by Globe and Nokia, and Ayala Foundation is the project manager.  I also oversee that project.  We have other projects in education, environment, eight different projects.  So an ordinary day for me spells meeting; meeting with the staff, partners.  I’m also involved with external activities like the Association of Foundations, Philippine Council for (____) Certification.  So an ordinary day also entails doing some work related to those networks of Ayala Foundation.

Jay-R Patron:  What brought you to working for the social development sector, the NGO?

Mario Deriquito:  What I consider the biggest influence was my exposure during my college days to very poor communities through my membership in the Ateneo Student Catholic Action group.  Somehow, that experience—I was four years in that organization—developed my, I want to call it desire to serve; to engage in a job that will enable me to be of service to others.  Of course, you can use practically any job to be of service to others but for me, I want to be in a job that directly serves others especially the disadvantaged.

Jay-R Patron:  So since college you have been involved in the NGO community, do you have any experience working for a private company?

Mario Deriquito:  Yes.  The first two years after college I started working for a private company.  After two years, I decided to shift to the non-profit kind of work.

Jay-R Patron:  What do you think is your purpose and passion in life?  What makes you wake up in the morning, get up, live life for another day?

Mario Deriquito:  Actually, that is a very difficult question.  My passion is to be able to make a difference in, especially in areas where I am involved in.  For example, for me now, the sector where I’m really involved with is the education sector—public education.  I want to be able to make a contribution to improve the quality of education, public education.

Jay-R Patron:  What are your highest and lowest points working with Ayala, the challenges and tribulations, that you face or you have faced in this profession?

Mario Deriquito:  There are many high points.  For example, in GILAS, we connect schools at an average of one school a day, and one school translates to about 500 students.  Knowing that our effort to providing that access to 500 students is a source of joy not only for me but for all of us.  In Ayala, I personally have been given many challenges, opportunities to try different things; education, environment.  I always take them as challenges that will enable me to grow as a person but also to serve others.  For me it’s a source of joy and satisfaction.  What are the lowest points?  There are times when work is simply too much.  I only have 24 hours in a day and I get to use half of that working.  Sometimes it’s very tiring.  And also because I am involved in a lot of different things, the variety is wide, sometimes I find it hard to shift from one meeting to another.  Because the first meeting is about a completely different topic compared to the next.  For example, I have a meeting on GILAS at 9 o’clock and a meeting on solid waste management at 10:30, and then another meeting on migration and development at 12.  It’s very hard to shift sometimes from one topic to another.

Jay-R Patron:  What has been your greatest challenge and how did you overcome it?

Mario Deriquito:  My greatest challenge… I can’t think of a single incidence, which I can conclude as my greatest challenge.  But for me looking back now, maybe the greatest challenge for me is to be able to do all these different things at the same times, like juggling.  Many different things, quite diverse.  Actually, that is the greatest challenge—to be able to handle all of these things and give my best.

Jay-R Patron:  Is this an on-going challenge, or are you able to handle and adjust to…?

Mario Deriquito:  It is an ongoing challenge but somehow I would like to think that I am able to manage doing all these things at the same time.

Jay-R Patron:  On the other hand, what has been your greatest achievement?

Mario Deriquito:  My greatest achievement? Ironically, I consider my greatest achievement as something that is not related to work.  It’s related to a volunteer work.  In our parish, Loyola Heights, we just finished the church.  I was the one who spearheaded the fundraising campaign.  I was able to design a very creative scheme in raising funds, very non-traditional.  It involved marketing, social marketing, and all of the branding.  It was so successful that we were able to raise the needed funds in about 1.5 years.  It became so successful and well-known within church circles that it was replicated by other parishes.  I can count at least 10 to 11 parishes that did the same thing and succeeded in achieving their fund-raising projects. 

Jay-R Patron:  Will you talk briefly about what you did?

Mario Deriquito:  Ok, the first fund raising that I designed, we call it project 8-4-8.   848 meant raising 8 million pesos in four months through eight different amounts of giving.  The campaign ran for four months, from August 8 to December 8 2004.  8 million was the target because it was the cost of the firt phase of the church construction.  We were able to raise that.  What are the eight giving levels?  It ranges from a thousand pesos to a million pesos.  For each level there is a corresponding number donors—like one donor for one million, down the level 500 to a thousand pesos.  It was so successful because we got very positive response.  It’s actually very hard to describe.  You actually have to experience it.  Anyway, that fund-raising scheme, making use of numbers to indicate target and time frame, after we raised 8 million, we launched another one—a similar campaign which enabled us to raise 18 million and then two more which enabled us to raise 6 million.  All-in-all a total of 32 million to complete the church construction.  Now another parish, Magallanes parish, the church was burned down, right?  They had to raise money to rebuild it.  They had been trying to raise funds.  There was a time when the parish priest was about to give up and then he heard about our scheme.  He invited us to share the experience with him and the other members of the parish to introduce to them our scheme and then they came up with their own campaign called, 10-10-25.  Raising 25 million in 10 months through 10 ways of giving.  And they raised 26 million after 10 months.  There was another parish which did a similar thing.  They called it project 10-10, raising 10 million through 10 ways of giving, and they raised 11 and a half.  There were other stories, in smaller amounts like a parish raised six million, another raised one million—All using the same scheme.  They just modified the numbers, but it worked.  And I consider it my greatest achievement.  For one thing, I’m really not a professional fundraiser, I didn’t study fund raising.  It just came out.  So there is a reason it came.

Jay-R Patron:  Why is it important to give back, volunteer, be involved in the community?

Mario Deriquito:  I think it’s important to give bacnk and volunteer because the need in society is so great.  Our institutions that are supposed to respond to these needs like government, these are simply not enough.  There is always a need for citizens to exercise their civic duty.  To help out, to supplement whatever our institutions are not able to provide.  It’s always important to give back.  I always believe that Filipinos, many Filipinos are willing to help…

Jay-R Patron:  They just don’t know how…

Mario Deriquito:  They just don’t know how.  They’re just not given the opportunity.  But if you look at our short history, we have this capability to be heroes to each other, capability for collective heroism.  We have shown that in EDSA.  We have shown that in projects like Gawad Kalinga, Habitat.  Even during calamities, there’s always an explosion of volunteerism and generosity.  Even in the fund raising campaigns I told you about, it is a manifestation of how generous people can be.  We just need to provide them the vehicle, the opportunity for them to be able to manifest that generosity and the capacity for collective heroism.

Jay-R Patron:  If there was one message that you would like to tell our readers, what would that message be?

Mario Deriquito:  Number one, we have to show our love for our country; wherever we are, in whatever capacity, we should always think of the welfare of our country.  All of us are capable of contributing something, no matter how small, in the form of resources or volunteer work or time, all of us have the capacity.