Now on its 10th year, Ramon V. del Rosario (RVR) Award for Nation Building and Ramon V. Rosario Siklab Awards once again honored the best entrepreneurs of the year for their excellence and impact on nation-building.
No less than Ramon V. del Rosario, Jr. himself, president and CEO of PHINMA Corporation said that the awards have come a long way and took note of the 11 “titans of entrepreneurship and genuine builders of [the] Filipino Nation” that have been recognized so far.
“The[se honorees] have blazed the most challenging of paths, providing the leadership needed to inspire teams and even entire communities to innovate and dream big,” he said.
Created in 2010, the RVR Award for Nation Building is an annual project of the Junior Chamber International Manila in collaboration with PHINMA and the Asian Institute of Management’s Ramon V. del Rosario Center for Corporate Responsibility.
This year’s RVR Award for Nation Building recipient, Dr. Jaime Aristotle Alip, was recognized for his work with the Center for Agriculture and Rural Development Mutually Reinforcing Institutions (CARD MRI), a group of companies that have aided underprivileged Filipinos in creating their own enterprises by providing microfinance, micro-insurance, business development services, and other basic social assistance to more than four million families in over 82 provinces all over the country.
CARD MRI was also given the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service in 2008 as well as the Global Excellence for Microfinance by the Grameen Foundation, USA.
As for the RVR Siklab Awards that was inaugurated last year by PHINMA together with the De La Salle University Ramon V. Del Rosario College of Business and the Junior Chamber International Manila. This particular award gathers inspiration from the experiences of PHINMA Founder Ramon V. del Rosario and the awardees of the RVR Award for Nation Building.
The said awards were given to young, emerging leaders ages 25 to 36 years old who showed excellent leadership in areas like advocacy and nation-building. The winners were Jan Bernard Tan (founder of iVolunteer), Melissa Yap (founder of Got Heart Foundation), Gary Avila Ayuste (beekeeping advocate and entrepreneur), Dr. Edgar Elago (Project Scholar founder), and Clarissa Isabelle Delgado (Teach for the Philippines co-founder).
In closing, Del Rosario concluded the awards ceremony with these inspiring words: “May our winners and their stories inspire us to keep fighting for what is good and what is right in these times of uncertainty, when more walls are being built up again, when freedoms we cherish are at risk, when inclusive growth continues to elude us, and when humanity’s continued apathy and denial is accelerating global scale climate disaster.”