This is my Library Research Paper for our ENG2 Class under Ma'am Kate De Jesus. I chose youth entrepreneurship as my topic because it is something that I am very passionate about. Way back in high school, I have always wanted to start my own business and become successful with it. I tried venturing on different small businesses, mostly online shops where I sold brand new and pre-loved items. Now that I am in college where there is more time for me to attend to business matters and meet new people, I was able to focus more and grow my business.
At first, I was clueless about what product or service I will sell in college, given that I have just entered the university as a freshman student. I barely had any idea of what and how I will do it. I had a lot of fears and hesitations. All I know is that I want to earn extra money so that if ever I want to buy something, I will not need to ask money from my parents anymore. My parents have already spent a lot for me in high school for my tuition fee, allowance, uniforms, books and supplies, peer pressure expenses just to blend in (yes it's a thing in an all girls' school), ball gowns, and everything in between. As soon as I went to college, this statement has always been in mind: "Ayoko na maging pabigat." Constantly reminding myself with this has been and always will be my driving force to step out of my comfort zone.
With that, I was inspired to learn more about youth entrepreneurship in the Philippine context. I started asking myself how I will be able to grow as a young entrepreneur. This research was not only done for the sake of fulfilling my requirements for my ENG2 class, but also to inspire other youth to do what they have always been dreaming of and step out of their comfort zone. I've met several aspiring and existing young entrepreneurs in our country and I believe that this time, we should have a voice in the society. Let us break the norms that the youth cannot do what adults can because after all, we are the hope of the next generation. Let us start now.
Money
matters among the Filipino youth
Today’s youth are not just
youth, they are the millennials. Millennials
are enthusiastic with attending to their responsibilities and always take
initiative in everything that they do. These young people yarn for affirmation
that is why their passion to excel is overflowing, making their way to be the
next generation of world-class professionals (“11 tips…”, 2016). Because
of this, the youth, or the millennials rather, has become more adventurous;
they have become bolder with the urge of getting out of their comfort
zone.Getting out of comfort zone means being a risk taker and being resilient.
With this in mind, the first step to becoming a young entrepreneur is being
promoted in the minds of the youth.
Starting a business can be
challenging and overwhelming for it requires one to take on a lot of
responsibilities, yet a number of young Filipinos managed to enter the scene of
entrepreneurship and proved that age does not matter when you are passionate
with what you are doing. Some of these notable young Filipinos who succeeded
and continue to grow into their respective fields of enterprise include
LaureenUy, Josh Bayabo, and Bene Sanchez. LaureenUy, a 26 year-old fashion blogger
at breakmystyle.com, is the pioneer
of the online clothing shop, Stylebreak, when she was in college and the
curator of the recent #BeTheBestYouPlanner
published underStradmore notes. Josh Bayabo, a 20 year-old entrepreneur who
ventured to a T-shirt printing business during his college days is currently a
financial planner at PhilAm Life while selling the company’s financial products.
While Bene Sanchez, the son of Bo Sanchez – a renowned financial mentor of the
Truly Rich Club, is a 16-year old who started selling bangus at age 6, and currently
earns money through web designing and composing campaign jingles for
politicians.
Through these successful stories of
young entrepreneurs, we can see that youth entrepreneurship is starting to grow
in the Philippines. It has been observed that there are several factors that
greatly affect a young individual’s inclination to entrepreneurship.
Influential factors such as education, financial literacy, parenting and
rearing, Filipino values system, and support from the government and the
private sectors should be improved to produce well-rounded and globally
competent young Filipino entrepreneurs.
Being
well-rounded and globally competent means that one is fully equipped with
knowledge, skills, abilities, character, and experiences that is needed in
order to keep up or even become better than other nationalities. Moreover,
bearing the qualities is not only considered as a challenge but also a
responsibility; as a young entrepreneur, there are matters that need to be
sustained, strengthened, and further improved in order to create a strong
foundation in an enterprise. Unlike any other developed countries, in the
Philippines, however, well-roundedness and global competence in the field of
youth entrepreneurship and financial literacy has not yet been fully realized. This
lacking may be greatly manifested by the deficiency in the curriculum of the educational
system, importance given to financial literacy, influences of parenting and
rearing, the common notions towards the Filipino values system, and support
from the government and private sectors.
Education
Education, a major influencing factor
affecting the youth, serves as the foundation of acquiring knowledge, skills,
and abilities that are requisites to becoming a competent entrepreneur. The
Philippine education system has recently adapted the K-12 curriculum wherein
students may choose among academic, sports, technical-vocational-livelihood,
and arts and design tracks. With that, an entrepreneurship subject is to be
taken by all strands in the academic track and a special subject for business
was entitled under the Accountancy, Business, and Management strand. However,
the concepts that will be taught in these entrepreneurship and business subjects
will only focus on business planning and the technical parts of a business
enterprise to give a glimpse of the business field, but will not fully
encourage the students to start their own businesses. In addition, financial
literacy alongside entrepreneurship should also be taught in schools to
highlight the importance of properly managing money in order to become
financially independent and debt-free.
Since it has been said that not all
components of youth entrepreneurship are learned in school, there are other
media where entrepreneurship education can be learned through the help and
insights from field experts, social innovators, organizations, and events
devoted to entrepreneurship. There are shows aired on television that tackles
livelihood and entrepreneurship such as My
Puhunan and Kabuhayang Swak na Swak
in ABS-CBN, where successful Micro Small and Medium entrepreneurs are featured
helping the needy by sharing their success stories and teaching them how to
start their own small business. Moreover, private institutions also organize
events focused on youth entrepreneurship. A three-day workshop entitled 2015
Youth Entrepreneurship Development Workshops (YEDW) was organized by The
Philippine Center for Entrepreneurship, more popularly known as GoNegosyo, in
partnership with the US Embassy in Manila where consecutive workshops were held
both for the current and aspiring young entrepreneurs to present and improve
their ideas, and be able to submit their entries for the contest afterwards.
While the Young Entrepreneur’s Society of the Philippines, which is also a
recognized entrepreneurship organization, conducts regular workshops and
conventions for young entrepreneurs such as the Global Entrepreneurship Week, Startup
Open Philippines, and Creative Business Cup Philippines. They also have chapter
organizations in different schools and universities. TheEnderun Colleges
Extension in Manila is also active in conducting workshops on sustainable
enterprise and idea pitch competitions to students. Unfortunately, their
workshops are not budget-friendly for all starting young entrepreneurs.
All in all, the skills and abilities
acquired through education in different forms are of great help and influence
to young entrepreneurs. The only problem in terms of education in this context
is that only business planning and its technical jargons are being taught, and
the timely application in real life and financial literacy are being neglected.
Robert Kiyosaki (2013), a financial mentor and a writer of the best-selling
book “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” highlights that “The
main reason people struggle financially is because they have spent years in
school but learned nothing about money. The result is that people learn to work
for money…but never learn to have money work for them.” Thus, the new
curriculum still needs to be improved further in order to help the students
apply their learning and eventually become financially literateyoung
entrepreneurs, one step closer to becoming well-rounded and globally competent.
Financial Literacy
The usual notion of teenagers or
sometimes even adults who want to start a micro business is that they do it for
the sake of earning money to be spent or to pay for something afterwards.
However, acquiring this mindset will not take you anywhere for it will just
suffice the need for a short period of time. Entrepreneurship should be viewed
in a long term basis to earn more profit and step by step, grow your
enterprise.
In an interview with young
entrepreneurs Josh Bayabo and Bene Sanchez, both said that they invest their
profits into the stock market and mutual funds. This is where the importance of
financial literacy comes in. According to the Financial Consumer Agency of
Canada (2015), the totality of
knowledge, skills and the ability to engage in a practical financial
decision-making as a whole are the key points to financial literacy. Josh and
Bene are successful with their enterprise because they are also financially
literate; they did not just spend their money for nothing. They secured their
profits for future use in a platform where it will also grow at the same time
through high interests and stock dividends.
Kiyosaki (2013) said that you have to be financially literate if you want to be rich. Being financially literate does not mean that one must glorify money; it is a responsibility of an individual to take good care of what he or she has worked hard for. People should know where to put his or her money where it will not just be stagnant, but growing as well such as investing in the stock market, bonds, treasury bills, and the like. Starting at a young age, the youth should already have knowledge of how to properly utilize and allocate their money since it is very important in preparation for the real world as well as for their future economic welfare (Tan as cited in “Filipino youth…”, 2013).
Parenting and Rearing
Parenting and rearing also plays a
big role in the formation of well-rounded young entrepreneurs. Parents have
different ways of raising their children, most especially with teaching them
the value of money and hard work.
According to Kiyosaki (2013), there
are two types of parents with different perspectives on money. The first type
of parent is the Rich Dad, who teaches his children how to make money work for
them. The second type of parent is the Poor Dad, who believes that one must
earn a degree, get a job, and work hard to earn money.
Between
these two types of parenting, the rich dad's outlook is what the parents should
embody. Parents must stimulate a growth mindset among the youth so that they
would strive to achieve more and avoid being a slave to work. After all,
working alone does not fully enable one to save a large amount of money unlike
having an extra income through entrepreneurship and being financially literate.
It is also
important that parents instill the value of hard work to earn money to avoid
what we call “affluenza” among children. Affluenza, as defined by a
psychologist (as cited in Welch, 2014), is an event wherein children who are
given everything they want become imprudent, irresponsible, and behave poorly
because they are not given limitations by their parents. Because children are
being spoiled, they neglect the fact that they need to strive on their own in
order to survive and further succeed in life.Parents should have
an attitude of “paghirapanmuna,” or
achieve something first before giving their children what they want instead of
“bigaylahat, bigayagad” or all out in spoiling their children to compensate
their lack of time and attention to them, most especially for the children of
the Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW’s) who usually think that spoiling their
children with material things will fill the gap of being away from their
families.
On the other hand, parents’ careers
and family businesses increase the children’s inclination to entrepreneurship
and choosing it as a career in the future is increased by how children perceive
their parents’ livelihood. Most children whose
parents are entrepreneurs have 60% probability of becoming entrepreneurs as
well (Lindquist &Praag, 2014). They
see how opportune their parents earn money and how well they are being provided
through their parents’ businesses.
Parents should teach financial
literacy to their children, and teaching this starts at home. Filipinos would
have a wiser mindset in money management and learn how to invest if parents are
regarded as good examples. The parents should make the whole family aware of
the source and the expenditures of the household budget, and explain to them why
they need to allocate money for savings and for other expenses (Delos Angeles,
2015).
Filipino Value System
In the Philippines, there is a
mentality where Filipinos are fond of extending their credit and asking for
discounts when doing business transactions with the people whom they are close
with. The most evident scenario of this will be the ones in small sari-sari stores where customers,
usually neighbors, would purchase an item and tell the seller “palista,” meaning the customer will not
pay now so the seller should list down his or her debts and he or she will just
pay in the future.
In the context of youth
entrepreneurship, people who take too much advantage of the young entrepreneurs
must not be tolerated for doing so, because it also contributes to the decrease
in profits of the seller. Therefore, when having business transactions with relatives
and friends, young entrepreneurs should be firm in treating them as customers.
Based on a study from the University of
Greenwhich Business School which analyzed cultural factors affecting
entrepreneurship in the Philippines, it is said that the young entrepreneurs
must be cautious with the advantages that their relatives and friends ask for
like special discounts, extended credit, personal use of resources, and even
debt of gratitude or utangnaloob as
Filipinos would call it (Co & Mitchell, n.d.). At an early age, they must
learn how to be firm with the transactions that they make with those people
because after all, business is still business. However, it is still up to the
young entrepreneur if he or she will give incentives and discounts to his or
her loyal customers just like what Bene Sanchez did with his bangus business.
Support from the government and private sectors
The government and the private
sectors also have efforts to support the young entrepreneurs although their
programs are not well publicized and not easily accessible to everyone who want
to participate, most especially the ones who do not have enough resources to
use for this matter.If most existing young entrepreneurs would be asked where
they could go if they want to ask help from the government, they probably would
not know where to go because of the lack of research on the MSME sector in Asia
particularly in the Philippines (Co & Mitchell, n.d.). This factor hampers
the initiative of young entrepreneurs.
Through
the Youth Entrepreneurship Bill, the government seeks to establish an
entrepreneurial arena by incorporating entrepreneurship courses both in high
school and college education, funding the budget for trainings and application,
and empowering young entrepreneurs through a nationwide youth entrepreneurship
program (Republic Act 10679, 2015).
Moreover, the Department of Trade
and Industry has developed a Micro Small and Medium Enterprise (MSME)
Development Plan for 2011 to 2016 to address the welfare of the MSME sector in
the Philippines. Under this program, the difficulties being faced by the
Filipino young entrepreneurs such as the limited access to technology and
source of capital are being discussed (Cuerdo, 2013). Yet, it cannot be said
that this program is being enjoyed by all concerned young entrepreneurs.
There
are universities that support entrepreneurship in different ways of expertise.
The University of the Philippines promotes technopreneurship,
an innovative design for entrepreneurship through the help of technology. At
the same time, the Ateneo de Manila University has an advocacy for social
entrepreneurship that highlights the products and services made for the
betterment of the society (Cuerdo, 2013).
Because of their advocacy of
promoting financial literacy, Mastercard supports organizations and programs
that share knowledge and skills on financial management to the youth that aims
for a long term development of young entrepreneurs and their respective
communities (Tan, as cited in “Filipino youth…”, 2013).
Based in an interview with young
entrepreneur Josh Bayabo who also works for PhilAm Life, some conventions on
entrepreneurship are being subsidized by their company but none of the interviewed
young entrepreneurs has said that they were able to receive help from the
government because they did not know how and where to avail of it.
However, these efforts by the
government and the private sectors are still not sufficient to raise an entrepreneurial
mindset and financial security among the Filipino youth in general regardless
of social status that is why it should start from the easily accessible factors
that affect in molding a young entrepreneur. Since both the government and the private sectors have the same vision
for young entrepreneurs, they should work together with the people in this
country and worldwide to produce a solid and sustainable program that is really
feasible to materialize and is easily accessible to everyone. This program
should not just be a plan, but rather be implemented successfully so that our
country’s economic status will also be improved through the contributions of
young entrepreneurs.
The
government and the private sectors must work hand in hand right at this moment
to empower the youth’s entrepreneurial spirit by promoting a culture that
empowers the youth in risk taking in engaging in an enterprise and be the best
in their chosen fields as they build their future. Not only by giving money could
these institutions help, but also by hosting sustainable programsfor training
the youth to accelerate at their best (Ernst & Young Global Limited, 2013).
Influential factors that affect the
proliferation of well-rounded and globally competent young entrepreneurs
Education is
important in raising well-rounded and globally competent young entrepreneurs
because it is in school where formal knowledge and experiences are gained. It
is where the students realize their fields of expertise and discover what and
how they can be an entrepreneur in that field.
Financial literacy is
of equal importance with an entrepreneurial mindset. A young entrepreneur must not only
have the entrepreneurial spirit, but also acquire financial literacy to
properly manage his or her profits well and avoid spending it for unnecessary
matters. Financial literacy should be raised to promote the economic welfare
and financial freedom of a country and its citizens.
Parenting and rearing are
very influential. Children must not just be sheltered, but rather be encouraged
to do more by getting out of their comfort zone. Parents should always affirm
their children most especially because it is how the millennialsbecome
determined with their work. As early as possible, parents mustteach their
children the value of money and hard work to avoid being dependent from their
parents forever.
There is nothing wrong
with the Filipino value system. In fact, it is beautiful because it shows how
the spirit of giving and helping the fellow members of the community take place
among the Filipinos. It is just that we should not take too much advantage of
the generosity and help that we receive.
Overall, it can be
said that youth entrepreneurship in the Philippines is on its way to
development. What we really need now are the extra efforts from all the sectors
and a culture accepting to this kind of entrepreneurial environment. Since the
government is the highest regulating body in our country, it should be more
efficient in generating programs and providing a space for the young
entrepreneurs in the society. Young entrepreneurs should be recognized because
the millenials are the next generation’s world class professionals.
For both the aspiring and the existing young
entrepreneurs, being excellent should always be the end in mind. Once they get
out of their comfort zone, they should be excellent in making choices, dealing
with people, and managing the work load to achieve their goal. Young entrepreneurs must have patience in
growth because success does not come easily, they must work hard for it. That
is why being resilient is also important. Resilience is the ability to bounce
back or stand up whenever they fail, so they must keep in mind that they have
to get up, move on, and strive to do better next time.
Young entrepreneurs are being called to act. Our country
is in dire need of young creative minds that could contribute to the growth and
development of our national statures. While education, financial literacy,
parenting and rearing, Filipino value system, and support from the government
and private sectors are making progress, the young entrepreneurs should also do
their part to make our country better. They should startgetting out of their
comfort zone and reach their dreams.
References:
Co,
M.J. & Mitchell, B. (n.d.).An
analysis of cultural factors affecting entrepreneurship in the Philippines.Greenwhich,
London: University of Greenwhich Business School. Retrieved from https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:SI_h7VK9NjEJ:https://www.researchgate.net/file.PostFileLoader.html%3Fid%3D53e7864ed685cce0528b45f8%26assetKey%3DAS%253A273635464417280%25401442251186133+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ph
Cuerdo,
A. (2013). The value of youth entrepreneurship. Retrieved from http://www.bworldonline.com/content.php?section=Beyond&title=The-value-of-youth-entrepreneurship&id=76023
Delos
Angeles, L. (2015).Republic
Act 10679: Youth entrepreneurship act now signed into law.
Retrieved from http://investinginphilippines.com/republic-act-10679-youth-entrepreneurship-act-now-signed-into-law/
Ernst
& Young Global Limited. (2013). Avoiding
a lost generation. Retrieved from http://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/Avoiding_a_lost_generation_June_2013/$FILE/Avoiding_a_lost_generation_LoRes_FINAL.pdf
Filipino
youth are among most financially literate in Asia Pacific: MasterCard. (2013).
Retrieved from http://www.adobomagazine.com/philippine-news/filipino-youth-are-among-most-financially-literate-asia-pacific-mastercard#sthash.cxnFuuUX.dpuf
Financial
Consumer Agency of Canada.(2015). Financial
literacy. Retrieved from http://www.fcac-acfc.gc.ca/eng/financialLiteracy/Pages/home-accueil.aspx
K to 12 Curriculum (n.d.). Retrieved from http://deped.gov.ph/k-to-12/curriculum-guides
Lindquist,
M., Sol, J., &Praag, M.V. (2014).Why
do parents have entrepreneurial children? Retrieved from http://tinbergen.nl
Republic
Act No. 10679-Senatorial Bill 2015 91032. (2015). Retrieved from http://www.senate.gov.ph/lisdata/1706114276!.pdf
Welch, K. (2014). What
really happens when we give kids everything they want. Retrieved from http://wearethatfamily.com/2014/01/what-really-happens-when-we-give-kids-everything-they-want/#sthash.w1XuewYu.dpuf
11 tips
for managing millenials. (2016). Retrieved from http://humanresources.about.com/od/managementtips/a/millenials.htm
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"Today’s youth are not just youth, they are the millennials. Millennials are enthusiastic with attending to their responsibilities and always take initiative in everything that they do." This is very true. I am a just a simple student until I met First Vita Plus who taught me that despite my young age I can make a difference. Thanks for a really great article!
ReplyDeleteThank you very much for reading my post Abby! Together, let us make a difference and empower the youth to unleash their potentials. Go for gold young entrepreneurs!
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