marketing ourselves to ourselves

That's the title of an article I came across as I navigated the Galing Pilipino Movement site. I'm putting it here in full and providing the site url at the end. I haven't even read the article in its entirety, but I'm too busy looking for sites and other materials that could continue feeding me (and others) with inspiration and diffusing the cynicism and hopelessness that are bound to come and go in the months to come, considering the latest happenings in the political scene.

Anyway, here is the article penned by Galing Pilipino President and co-founder Erly de Guzman:

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Marketing Ourselves to Ourselves
by Erly de Guzman

(This article was published in the View from Taft column of the Business World
on June 17, 2004).

Yes! WE did it again! Just when the world was marveling at us for having a Tony Tan Caktiong as World Entrepreneur of the Year; a Patricia Evangelista, international public speaking world champion; a Cheryl Diaz-Meyer, Pulitzer Prize photojournalism winner; a Manny Pacquiao, one of the world’s top-rated super bantamweight boxing champion; Filipino nurses like Nelia Laroza (who died in line of duty) as well as doctors staying on the job to treat SARS patients in foreign lands; a Roselle Ambubuyog, blind summa cum laude Ateneo graduate, now consulting for a Florida-based firm to develop talking computers and blind-friendly IT systems; a Dr. Josette Biyo, former biology professor at, and Master of Science and Ph.D. graduate of, De La Salle University, who was the very first Asian to receive the Intel Excellence in Teaching Award and who now has a planet named after her… oh, the Galing Pilipino list could go on and on.

As I was saying… just when the world was marveling at Filipinos…another ‘blooper’ trips the glad scene. This time, it’s the election protest and counter-protest, proclamation and un-proclamation, the unending canvassing and speechifying. At one time, it was a “cosmopolitan” coup that arrested our fledgling turnaround. A few presidencies ago, it was brownouts, blackouts and cop-outs.

Why do we keep doing these things to ourselves? To ensure that the why question is not merely rhetoric, let’s focus on how we should keep from doing these things to ourselves. How should Pilipinos market themselves to themselves?

By putting the focus on what we are good and excellent at, recognizing that in ourselves and in others, affirming that and propagating the same. Focusing on strength and not on weakness. Building up rather than putting down.

Tall order. Mammoth task. Impossible dream? Nay. It can be done. One step at a time. One by one. Each one doing his or her part. Because we believed this to be so, we started the Galing Pilipino Movement to get this advocacy going. And two years into it, we are getting somewhere. From 12 members at its onset, GPM has grown to 1,494 as of June 7, 2004. Even the national government has adopted the thematic tag “Ang galing mo! Galing ng Pilipino” for this year’s June 12 celebration.

We turned two years old on June 12, as the entire nation celebrated the 106th anniversary of our Philippine Independence. We spent this day celebrating our freedom to be galing by featuring 36 Galing Pilipinos in simultaneous Galing Pilipino Kapihans in 13 sites all over the country. Julie Gandioco of Julie’s Bakeshop shared how her Cebu-based enterprise has become a business success with pan de sal scholars nationwide. Cebu housewife Ching Ten Co shared in the GPKapihan-Cebu about how she hated trash, developed a solution, and won a fund grant from World Bank/Aus-Aid for her innovative plastic waste recycling project in the Lapu-Lapu City Dumpsite community.

In the GP Kapihan-Laguna, jeepney driver Ruben Opis revealed his plans of doing an information campaign on traffic safety and road discipline together with his Caltex co-awardees as outstanding public transport drivers. Cancer-stricken Selina Sayong, in the GP Kapihan-Cubao, presented how she developed and marketed the extra-virgin coco oil as an effective health food supplement, and how its processing can be a potent income opportunity for coco-farmers. They are Galing Pilipinos, ordinary people doing ordinary things extraordinarily well. They shared brilliant examples of how to fight negativism and complacency by forging ahead into a proactive solution mode. They left behind their mediocre past. They ushered in the Galing generation. We can do the same. They have shown the way. And we know that time and again, crises bring out the best in the Pilipino.

GPM is a purposive counterpoint to the pervasive helplessness and hopelessness felt by many of our countrymen today. It is about time that we take action to change our destiny. To forego active civic engagement at this crucial juncture in our country’s history is treason. To keep to the sidelines and watch the parade is to miss making a defining moment in our history. We cannot afford to merely engage in talk or to go with the flow. It is squandering our opportunity to make a change for greatness. This nationwide movement, composed of the rich and the poor, the depressed and the inspired, has continued to teach us that we Pilipinos have what it takes to overcome the overwhelming odds that confront us by focusing on what is good and excellent about us.

I am sure that each of you can come up with something ‘Pilipino’ that you can truly be proud of. Your neighbor who cooks the best-tasting adobo in your whole province. Your ate who gave up marriage and decided to go overseas to support your studies. The jeepney driver who gave up pasada earnings to rush your passenger-seatmate to the hospital because she was about to give birth. Your best teacher who decided to stick it out in her barrio high school instead of going to Texas to teach blonde and blue-eyed kids.

There’s a lot to get inspiration from if we look for it … if we focus on the best in each of us… if we choose to look for what is good and galing, instead of going “Oh no, not again.” Today, we are either at the brink of an economic-political disaster, or at the threshold of a golden moment, when, by the choices we make – or do not make – we are writing Philippine history.

What legacy will we bequeath? Let us keep to the noble course of our past. Let us make galing the brand mark of being Pilipino today. Our circumstances today challenge us to renew the spirit of the Pilipino with a brand of excellence that is Galing. We can turn what is a “woe” into a “wow.”

It all depends on the galing that we do today.

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Check out Galing Pilipino Movement.