The Rotary Club of Makati has embarked on a quest to assist in promoting and developing an inclusive economy through innovation, particularly targeting the underprivileged in our community.

With the help of generous benefactors, RCM has just completed the construction of a modest three-story building adjacent to the Makati Rotary Club Foundation Inc. building along Camia Street in Guadalupe Viejo.

We are currently in search of equally minded non-profit organizations that can partner with us to generate meaningful and inclusively relevant activities in our new building, the Paing Hechanova Creativity Center, named after the late Rafael Hechanova, our most esteemed member who extolled the virtues of what it means to be a good Rotarian and who during his lifetime exemplified Rotary’s motto of Service Above Self for the greater good of all concerned.

What is Inclusive Innovation anyway in the context of today’s world? To understand its true essence and the urgency of the situation, one need not look too far beyond the comfortable homes of 2 percent of the populace, the upper-income bracket, who live in exclusive gated villages that certainly do not at all represent the reality of the middle class living in disadvantaged areas that still rely on ground or surface water prone to contamination which represents about 40 percent of the population, according to the Philippine Institute of Development Studies.

The rest constitutes the 58 percent lower income class, constituting the majority of Pinoys, which includes our dismal brethren, the informal settlers, squatters actually, who live in leaking makeshift shanties next to stinking and flood prone esteros dotting the metropolis. And as most of us, dear readers, traverse in our air-conditioned pollution-emitting vehicles along the mostly heavily polluted and abysmally congested thoroughfares of our communities, the majority of the population are crammed to the hilt in the equally smoke-belching polluting buses and ubiquitous WWII vintage jeepneys plying the traffic-jammed streets trying to make ends meet as fuel prices and inflation eat up the drivers’ meager daily hand-to-mouth fares.

This graphic conundrum of daily life is, however, only the tip of the iceberg, a slice of the plight of the Philippines, which unfortunately and realistically cannot just be all passed on to the government to solve. Those of us in the private sector who are able will simply have to do our share, and the government has identified Inclusive Innovation as probably one key to unlocking these age-old issues.

In this regard, do you know about RA 11337 or the Innovative Start-Up Act? It is legislation signed into law in April 2019 that seeks to promote inclusive growth through an innovative economy to create new jobs and opportunities, improve production, and advance innovation and trade in our country.

The law defines innovation as the creation of a new product, process, or service that can be spread or transferred across the market. The product has to be “new or significantly improved in technical specifications, component materials, software, user friendliness or other functional characteristics.”

These aspirations can only be accomplished with the use of Digital Technology accelerated by the Covid pandemic that forced people to break away from conventional modes of daily living. In particular, the rapid advancement of Generative Artificial Intelligence promises to be that key. The government, through the DoST, DICT and DTI, is providing support for such programs, incentives, benefits, mentoring, and venture capital funding for Start-Ups and Start-Up Enablers in collaboration with non-profit organizations such as RCM.

We are answering this call by offering our new facility as a co-working space for incubators and a VC (venture capital) community venue for VC founders, academicians, prospective VC investors, and fledgling techno-entrepreneurs where there could be free-flowing discussions and partnership ideas that can germinate.

We have already taken the first steps with our Creativity Center, the Hack-a-Thon, the Hatch Project, and collaboration with Start-Up Village. We call on other NGOs to reach out to us and join our advocacy to support an Innovative Inclusive economy for the betterment of our nation.

Until next week… OBF!

For comments, email bing_matoto@yahoo.com.