The Philippines is fraught with poverty – and ideas are needed to fight this scourge. Are you up to the challenge?

Project Pagsulong is a P1M challenge lodged at Filipino entrepreneurs. The task is both simple yet hard: to formulate business ideas that will help reduce poverty in the Philippines

Troll: It all sounds familiar. It feels like a rehash of a contest that was co-sponsored by Globe, the Kickstart-Appbridge challenge. It doesn’t matter though, different approaches and sponsors, common lofty goal.

Social Entrepreneurship is the Shiz!

Traditional entrepreneurship models are geared towards improving the bottom line (i.e. earning more). The primary goal of Project Pagsulong revolves around Social Entrepreneurship which has a two prong approach of being profitable and at the same time shooting for socially relevant objectives such as environmental protection or income growth in rural communities.

Prime examples for Social Entrepreneurship are:

• Hapinoy – Launched to increase the income of sari-sari store owners through micro-financing and new business opportunities.

• Rags2Riches – This program uplifted the lives of a Payatas community through the production of designer homeware and fashion accessories from excess cloth from garment factories.

Esther Santos, PLDT-Smart Foundation President:

“We believe in investing in our youth and their ability to take part in finding novel solutions to our social problems, some of which, in fact, were the same problems encountered by generations but have remained unsolved…”

Preliminary Rules!

• Open to teams of three to five members, all of which have to be 18 to 30 years old

• The business idea must address social issues and will be judged based on the following criteria:  social impact, innovation, feasibility, team management and community participation

• Deadline for submission of entries is on August 31, 2012, after which, four lucky finalists will be selected.

Booty!

• First place: cash grant of P500K

• Second: P300K

• Third: P200K

• P100K to the People’s Choice Award (which will be based on online voting)

Project Pagsulong is supported by PLDT KaAsenso, the PLDT-Smart Foundation, The Outstanding Students of the Philippines Alumni Community (TOSP-AC) and the RFM Foundation.