SM Foundation spreads infrastructures of care
Facilities spread across Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao. Yet both consistently redirect attention away from numbers and toward collaboration.
SM Foundation senior project manager Albert Uy (left) and project supervisor Roma Carbonell explained to Daily Tribune’s weekly online program Straight Talk, the interlocking programs of medical missions and wellness centers that have benefited communities through a coordinated offensive with great help from the SM malls spread throughout the nation.
Photograph courtesy of Albert Uy
They arrive not as public figures, but as practitioners of a system that moves quietly behind the country’s most visible structures.
On an episode of DAILY TRIBUNE’s Straight Talk, SM Foundation’s leading figures, Albert Uy and Roma Carbonell, sit across from the program’s hosts, with the ease of people used to explaining work that is logistical, repetitive, and often unseen.
The conversation never drifts far from structure. Both speak from within the SM Foundation, an institution that defines its purpose in terms of systems — access, continuity and scale.
Carbonell frames it early and plainly, “Our goal, or our mission, is to uplift the lives of underserved communities.”
It is a statement that anchors everything that follows, grounding the discussion not in ambition but in need.
What emerges is less a story of individual initiative than of sustained infrastructure.
Their work rests on two interlocking programs: medical missions and wellness centers.
The missions, which began in 2001, are described by Uy in a way that resists the idea of charity as temporary.
“When we see the medical mission, we think it’s just one time… But for SM Foundation, we do it comprehensively,” he says, reframing what might otherwise be understood as episodic outreach into something continuous and layered.
HEALTHCARE closer to home SM Foundation’s Health and Wellness project has transformed the Polomolok East Community Clinic in Barangay Cannery, Polomolok, South Cotabato, into a modern beacon of care. In partnership with Mahintana Foundation and the local government unit, the renovated facility now serves nearly 50,000 residents — especially those in geographically isolated and disadvantaged areas and indigenous communities. The upgraded clinic features specialized zones for animal bite treatment, TB-DOTS, nebulization, counseling and family planning, plus an enhanced dental clinic, breastfeeding room, play areas for children, Felicidad T. Sy spaces for the elderly and eco-friendly rainwater harvesting.