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Press Release

Shell Recognises Sustainable Business Ventures

23/01/2009

In its continuing pursuit to help in the advancement of communities through collaboration and engagement, Shell companies in the Philippines (SciP) joined the Philippine Business in Development (BiD) Challenge 2008 in recognising entrepreneurs with innovative and viable ideas that contribute to the growth of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the country. The Philippine BiD Challenge 2008 is the country's only competition for business plans that provides coaching and investor matching for sustainable enterprises by serving as a platform for entrepreneurs to find investors, markets and other business contacts and networks necessary to help build or expand their businesses. With this, the BiD Challenge hopes to contribute towards poverty alleviation and to the achievement of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. Shell has been supporting the Philippine BiD Challenge for two years now.

The top winners in the 2008 Philippine BiD Challenge were Rags2Riches and the EchoStore projects. Rags2Riches, led by Rev. Xavier Alpasa, SJ, is a business that produces bags out of clothing scraps designed by Rajo Laurel and manufactured by the women from Payatas, a slum area in Quezon City. On the other hand, EchoStore, short for Environment and Community Hope Organization Store, promotes a sustainable lifestyle through eco-friendly products.


For his venture on the “Production of Affordable and User Fit Lower Limb Prosthesis,” Johnny Lantion from Metro Manila received the Shell companies in the Philippines  Special Award.  Lantion, who is disabled and a beneficiary of his product, disability,  has developed a highly functional yet affordable lower limb prosthetic. Pilipinas Shell Downstream Communications Manager Mylene Santos presented the award to Lantion during the awarding ceremonies held recently.


Out of 174 business proposals received by the Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP), 35 were chosen to receive professional business mentoring.  The best ten of 35 were awarded with Php 100, 000, while the top two winners will represent the country in the International Challenge in Amsterdam, Netherlands, along with 11 other participating countries. The BiD Challenge was initiated by the Dutch National Committee for International Cooperation and Sustainable Development in 2004 through the BiD Network Foundation and in partnership with private Dutch companies, to promote the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals to alleviating poverty.  In the Philippines, the BiD Challenge was launched in 2006 by the PBSP, the first in the world to host its own version of the BiD Challenge, in partnership with Fair Ventures, a Dutch NGO.