BY ANGIE ESGUERRA PETTERSSON (Former Corporate Affairs Manager of EON)
7 March 2010
Business Mirror

Peter* is a bright-eyed first grader with a shy smile. In school he has a reported average of 85.25 and has performed well in the subject Sibika at Kultura, though he admittedly needs to work a little harder in English. He loves to eat vegetables, sleeps at 8 p.m. and is at a healthy weight for his age range. In his free time, he enjoys drawing his favorite cartoon characters. He just recently learned to tie his own shoelaces.

Anne Marie* is in third grade. In a recent picture, she is smiling into the camera, sporting neat braids and a sparkling white uniform, as she plays a schoolyard game of luksong tinik with friends. She reports that Science is her best subject at school. When she isn’t helping her parents by taking care of her brother and sister at home, she likes to play with her dolls or join fellowship activities at the community center.

Peter and Anne Marie are just two of the 13 children who send regular updates on their progress in school and at home to the staff of EON The Stakeholder Relations Firm. Their Annual Progress Reports are posted in the EON office public boards, where the employees can see how the kids are faring. Employees check on the progress of these kids as these employees are their sponsors. These kids and others are the beneficiaries of a company-driven initiative, where EON employees are given the option to sponsor individual children or contribute to a group sponsorship scheme through the World Vision program. World Vision in turn, works in partnership with nongovernment organizations, in this case the Batong Sandigan Development Foundation Inc. and lends educational assistance to children everywhere. In short, Eon has made it easy to help provide for the needs of schoolchildren in less than well-to-do communities and help ensure that they stay in school.

Spearheaded by Ana Bobadilla, Tangerine’s (the below-the-line arm of EON) events manager, the scheme was an easy choice to adapt. Aiming to encourage the staff to be part of the company’s corporate social responsibility initiatives, EON was also faced with the challenge of providing an easy, accessible way for the employees to be involved. Thus the scheme is employs an easy salary deduction method. As for members of the staff who don’t feel they can afford to individually sponsor a child, the group scheme allows them to contribute and to be a part of collective effort to make a difference in the lives of others. “It’s now a shared commitment. “ Ana says, “The staff at EON feels that they are able to help more kids by banding together and making this a team effort. And because it is a shared responsibility, it is more easily sustainable. As a result, the rewards are shared as well. ”

For Michael San Diego, this EON project is close to the heart. A former beneficiary of the World Vision Program himself, this EON deputy managing director and chief financial officer cannot imagine achieving what he has today without the early assistance of his own World Vision sponsor when he was a youngster. Today, he wants to pay it forward and make sure that more kids, who may have been just like him, will be given a better chance at a successful future. He believes that it is one of the easiest projects a company can take on. With the help of a little scheme in cooperation with the Finance unit, EON has been able to carry on the project successfully in the past year. “We want to encourage other companies to do the same for World Vision, and therefore help more children in need. You don’t have to be a big company to help make that difference,” says Michael. “You just need people who want to help and the company can enable that.”

Of this company project experience, employees like Patty Dimaano of the Stakeholder and Public Affairs unit (SPA) can only be positive. “You hardly feel that you are making the contribution,” Patty says, “But it makes you happy to know that you are able to help kids go to school.”

Vikki Luta, also of SPA, agrees that knowing that it takes so little to help others is inspiring. “I’m part of the group sponsorship scheme right now. It’s encouraging me to actually sponsor a child on my own sometime in the future.” Involvement and commitment thus, can only multiply.

EON’s sponsors and their children have yet to meet, but it is definitely in the plans for the company. The staff is eager to meet the kids with whom they have been connected through the World Vision program. “Being part of the group sponsorship is only the beginning,” Ana Bobadilla likes to think, as she continues to manage the project, “When you get that progress report and the thank you letters from the likes of Peter or Anne Marie you can’t help but want to get to know these kids. You also can’t help but want to do more.”

*Names have been changed