People and organizations face different challenges whether you’re a social entrepreneur looking for partners to help scale your impact, a company building something new for your clients, or a startup founder trying to raise pre-Series A funding. I’m currently based in the Philippines and in one week, we’ll be launching Nexus Innovation Labs, De La Salle Lipa’s hub for innovation, collaboration, and entrepreneurship.

Through Nexus, we aim to empower innovators to use their skills to drive sustainable and inclusive social impact. We started this idea because we believe that it is our responsibility to educate the leaders of tomorrow by showing them the realities of today. Building it for a school with a population of 10,000 students and 700 employees wasn’t easy. But thankfully, I learned a lot during my time in Seattle working as a volunteer for Social Venture Partners Fast Pitch, a blogger for the Washington Technology Industry Association, and as Inside Sales and Marketing Manager for Magnum Print Solutions.

Here are some of my key takeaways from that time that helped me develop our new initiative:

Understand Your Community

Nearly 11 million Filipinos consider themselves poor. Poverty is still the country’s greatest problem. You’ll find slums in urban areas and in rural areas; there are people living with no access to electricity, water, and clean sanitation. Despite the challenges, families living in poverty still go through great lengths to provide the best education to their children and to show hospitality to those who need it. You’ll also hear stories of kids literally crossing rivers and getting wet just to get to school. This is because our culture gives high importance to education, hospitality, and family values.

Through these values, I believe that we can collectively motivate and mobilize our community to address our problems. We need to work together to create dignified opportunities so that they can self-provide for their needs. We need to create new jobs that would create more wealth to address poverty. By recognizing these needs, our team decided to develop an incubation and acceleration program at our innovation lab that will help innovators, collaborators, and entrepreneurs create new ideas that will address social, environmental, and economic issues.

Be Inclusive

The Philippines is a leader among nations in closing the gender gap, having been in the Top 10 for the past 10 years. During pre-colonial times, indigenous tribes in the archipelago gave women great reverence. According to Dr. Michael Daniels, an Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia, “[r]ather than being relegated to household chores and child rearing, as was the case for women elsewhere in Southeast Asia, pre-colonial Filipino women could own or inherit family property, engage in trade, fight as warriors, and even hold positions as religious leaders (called babaylan), who were called on to act as healers and seers.”

Politically, the Philippines have had two female Presidents and currently has its first female Vice-President. Economically, women are paid more than men. And while the Philippines seems to be doing well when it comes to empowering women, there’s still a lot of issues they face everyday. Women are still “marginalized and disadvantaged” at work, and only half of the total population is employed. In 2016, the Philippines ranked 57th in term of economic participation and opportunity.

This is why we need to empower our stakeholders to gain access to continuing education, skills training, master classes, and short courses. This is because diversity and inclusion are our moral responsibilities as a Catholic institution, and our ethical responsibilities as a member of the community.

Collaborate to Succeed

Metro Manila is the country’s main economic hub with a population of roughly 12 million people inside 240 square miles. It’s like Seattle, Bellevue, Redmond, Kirkland, Mercer Island, and Renton combined, but with 11 times more people. A report ranks Manila 3rd in Asia with the worst city traffic. Another survey cites the Philippines as the worst place to be a driver. To sum it up, traffic is really really bad. While the government is investing a lot in new roads and mass transit, we believe that by engaging in multisectoral collaboration, we can develop solutions that would benefit our communities.

Here in the Philippines, the Department of Science and Technology recently launched 20 new Technology Business Incubators (TBIs) in select colleges and universities. These incubators are developed “to promote innovation and technopreneurship for the country’s socio-economic development in a knowledge-based world economy.” Similarly, the Department of Trade and Industry has been establishing Fabrication Labs (FABLABs) to “encourage innovation and creativity in industry, particularly for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises.”

These examples shows how collaboration can spur innovation and entrepreneurship. In Washington State, WTIA’s Ion Collaborators program is a great example of collaboration that aims to bring together community collaborators to tackle community problems.   

Looking Ahead

I recently met an entrepreneur at a networking event in Manila. During our conversation, I eventually learned that he is an alumnus of De La Salle Lipa, and when I shared our vision for Nexus Innovation Labs, he got very excited. Entrepreneurs like him now have access to an innovation space that provides quality resources and that no longer requires them to travel and/or relocate to Manila.

Manila is suffering from urban decay, and the Philippines needs to develop new business and industrial hubs around the country to decongest the capital and to provide more opportunities to other cities and towns. By launching Nexus Innovation Labs, De La Salle Lipa aims to help in doing so because we are building a new community of action-oriented and impact-driven citizens. We believe that these changemakers will help us improve the quality of life for our stakeholders and help transform the city into a new hub for innovation for the country. Globally, we hope that our graduates will be effective contributors to the promotion and development of sustainable businesses, progressive industries, efficient governance, and inclusive communities.