According to the Center for Asia Pacific Studies, in the Philippines, out of every 100 students, only 66 will finish primary education, 42 will finish secondary education, and 14 will get a degree. Worse, adds the Smart Entrepreneurship Program, even for the 14 who will finish college, only 7.7% will get employed after they complete their degrees.

This led GE Money Bank (GMB) to “see what we can do to help better the situation,” says Eric Montelibano, assistant vice president for corporate communications of GEMB. More specifically, “we wanted to target women, who, anecdotal evidence (informally gathered by GEMB) showed, continue to be disadvantaged because of their gender, with many parents, especially in rural areas, still preferring to send men to school, often at the expense of women.”

So in 2006, GEMB partnered with Let’s Go Foundation (LGF), a non-profit organization that focuses on entrepreneurship education, to develop its corporate citizenship program that “focuses on empowering women through entrepreneurship,” Montelibano says.

More specifically, GEMB aims to create a curriculum for an entrepreneurship training program specifically tailored to the needs of would-be women entrepreneurs. And come June, the mentoring starts, with GEMB and LGF already partnering with, among others, the Consortium of Women Colleges, as well as other women groups, to implement the newly-devised curriculum. “This way, we can teach women to (venture into) entrepreneurship even before finishing schooling,” say Montelibano, “so that they then become, after schooling, not just job seekers, but even ob providers.”

Thus far, GEMB has already spent P25 million for the program, “plus other indirect costs,” says Montelibano. “But we’re committed to this program for the long-term.”

The question that immediately comes to mind, then, is what is in it for GEMB? According to Montelibano, however, “we never look at it that way (gaining from the effort). GEMB is, thankfully, already established, so we (can afford to do) something that is, simply put, relevant. Risking sounding clichéd, GE aims to help effect changes in the world. That is a company philosophy. This, simply, is an effort to further effect these changes.”

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