Author: GOT HEART FOUNDATION
ABSTRACT
Got Heart Foundation, a non-profit organization, partnered with over 200 rural communities throughout the country to provide them sustainable livelihood by finding a market for goods they produce. From the time Melissa Yap founded it in 2007, it grew to host a variety of social enterprises which included selling food and non-food products to institutional buyers, a farm-to-table restaurant, and a physical store. When COVID entered the country and choked the economy in March 2020, Melissa found herself in a fitting situation to help buyer-less farmers and jobless sewers in Tarlac find an alternative yet dignified way to continue earning income. Social media unexpectedly played a vital role in finding a market for the farmers' goods. It also allowed The Bunny Project, which started as a donation drive that employed the sewers, to scale into a livelihood project, first by supplying personal protective equipment for medical frontliners, then reusable diapers and protective blankets for victims of Typhoon Ulysses. Apart from these, the restaurant also relied more on online promotions and delivery apps to stay afloat. For Got Heart, business continuity involved investing in the right people, fostering strong relationships with the communities, and of course, the right technology, such as POS Systems, digital banking, and communications tools, to prepare for the future.
Purpose-Driven Entrepreneurship
Melissa Yap started volunteering for various charities, orphanages, and housing projects in high school. This opened her eyes to the complex problems that kept rural communities below the poverty line.
In 2007, at just 22 years old, Melissa founded the Got Heart Foundation to raise funds for scholarships. She soon realized that this was not sufficient to help rural communities improve their livelihood.
Melissa had the desire to help communities build a sustainable income stream through livelihood projects, instead of the traditional model of fund-gathering and dole-outs. She observed that certain communities were capable of producing quality goods as they participated in government training programs, they just didn’t have the means to bring the goods to market. She saw this as an opportunity to set up a social enterprise, so she went back to school to pursue a master’s degree in Entrepreneurship.
In 2013, the Got Heart Shop was born. Its mission was to bring to market all-natural, organic, and local food and non-food products produced by the foundation’s partner communities across the country, such as the Aeta and Abelling tribes in Tarlac. Through Got Heart, partner-produced goods were marketed not only to retail consumers but also to institutions. Products were showcased in large department stores and grocery chains around the country, staging their goods outside the tiangge.
Got Heart went beyond being just a marketing arm for the communities’ goods. Melissa would often say, “relationship building is the most vital part.” These communities were regarded as partners, not merely as suppliers. Beginning with raw materials that are abundant in the area, the Got Heart Team, together with the community members, developed products with them by setting up makeshift laboratories in their visits. This way, the community became an integral part of the value chain.
Local farmers often faced challenges such as inefficient farming practices, unjust practices by middlemen, and lack of knowledge on savings and reinvesting. Because of this, Got Heart Farms was founded to capacitate local farmers by introducing to them effective and efficient natural farming methods. Their produce would then be then sold in the Got Heart Shop, which has two branches in Quezon City.
As the supply of vegetables increased, Melissa co-founded Earth Kitchen to serve as an additional channel to bring local produce to market in another way, in the form of farm-to-table dining. Not only does it contribute to a healthier ecosystem, but it is also a delight to hearty eaters as it comes with freshness and flavor.
By building a holistic ecosystem of products and services that involves the community, Got Heart Foundation is making strides in building a sustainable and equitable future to help alleviate poverty in the country.
Impact of COVID-19 on Got Heart’s Operations
Asked how their business operations were disrupted when the government called for enhanced community quarantine in March 2020, she revealed that it mainly affected customer interaction. “We didn’t close completely, but we had very minimal operations,” she recounted, referring to Got Heart Shop and Earth Kitchen. Events were canceled, and they had to reduce their headcount from 25 employees to 10. Since she had other business ventures, she was able to transfer some of her waitstaff.
Earth Kitchen was open for deliveries, which became a major revenue channel in a time when customers were reluctant to step out to dine. Its Facebook page displayed party trays and bento boxes, options that restaurants offered as people shifted to eating more from home. Customers can call the restaurant to order for Lalamove, Angkas, or Grab riders to pick up. They were also available on FoodPanda, a food delivery app.
Accidental Distributor
Despite the slowdown of Got Heart Shop’s in-store operations, new doors were opened.
“Mango farmers messaged me saying they needed help because buyers and usual investors couldn’t go to them and they had 10 tons of mangoes that could have gone to waste, so we bought everything. I posted about it online on my personal profile.” That night in April of 2020, she immediately researched ways to turn the mangoes into marketable products. Little did she know about what would happen next. “When I woke up the following day, the post went viral and everything got sold out.” People expressed their interest to buy the mangoes, selling the full stock overnight. Looking back, she thought, “It was a lucky thing. Not every day would my post get viral.” Melissa continues to help the mango farmers to this day.
Aside from the mangoes, Got Heart also supplies 30,000 to 60,000 kilos of rice every week to foundations like Tanging Yaman and large grocery chains like Walmart. She would also have four truckloads of goods delivered to Manila from their partner communities in Tarlac, Mindoro, and Maguindanao. What started as a one-time effort to help farmers sell their goods grew to become a regular logistics operation, and Melissa responded to the call with heart.
Because people were making their pledges, she inevitably had to consolidate payments then distribute them to the partner communities. “People would send money to us, and we’d encash them or give them a pay-to-cash check. The money just passes through us, we don’t earn from the rice and the mangoes.” That’s why she’s glad she started using GCASH, because she finds it “much easier and simpler” than other online payment options. “When you do a bank transfer, you can’t copy and paste the account number. There’s a lot of back and forth (in switching the windows). It’s so much hassle,” she pointed out. Aside from that, it also had a higher limit than most online banks, which allowed her to receive payments over P50,000 in full. With the pandemic limiting mobility, easy, no-contact modes of payment were embraced by both businesses and consumers.
Bunnies & Blankets
Got Heart’s main channel for product promotion was social media. At the onset of the enhanced community quarantine in Luzon in March 2020, it suddenly became a powerful tool to mobilize resources for the greater good.
As she also managed a pharmaceutical company, Melissa was well aware of the medical frontliners’ need for personal protective equipment (PPE). “Hospitals were asking for help in producing PPEs, and people were also messaging us, asking for ways to help.”
Thus, what started as a project under the pharmaceutical company evolved into The Bunny Project, a separate operational structure under the Got Heart Foundation. Melissa’s team was able to tap 209 jobless mananahis (seamstresses) to sew PPEs, or 'bunnies' as Melissa calls them, for distribution to hospitals all over the country. From an initial target of 10,000 suits financed by the company, they were able to sew and distribute 50,000 suits with the help of kind strangers who gave out of their pockets.
In difficult times, Facebook’s viral effect became a catalyst for change. The Bunny Project’s page received an influx of messages, day and night. “It unexpectedly grew (so fast) that I had to create a separate Facebook page and we had to have a chatbot!”
They didn’t just stop at bunnies. Last November, the project also received pledges to produce reusable diapers and waterproof family blankets that doubled as ground cover and mini-tent for the victims of typhoon Ulysses. “We had to shift to more relevant and more feasible things,” she recollected.
“In a way, we’re still doing what we’re supposed to do, but in a different way,” she pondered. The success of The Bunny Project showed how social media had become a major avenue for scaling social projects.
Perspective on Business Continuity Planning
People
When asked about business continuity planning, she stressed, “The most important thing for me is the people, that they share the same heart, the same purpose. It’s really (about) identifying and training people early on who will continue with the business.”
Relationships served as the heart of Got Heart. “The most important internal process we have is really building relationships with farmers and people we work with; understanding their challenges, understanding ourselves, and what we can actually do.” To do this, they always asked themselves, “What can they contribute to the business model we have? How can they fit into the supply chain in a nice way where they're not marginalized?”
Because of their strength in relationship-building, The Bunny Project was able to grow its network from a small group of empowered titas in the community to 209 home sewers. “It’s because they know what we’re doing. And so, the impact was fast.” Community partnerships served as the key asset and growth driver of the organization.
Technology
When asked about technology that the team uses to communicate, Melissa shared that they use Facebook Messenger to communicate with the community leaders. As face-to-face meetings are scarcer nowadays, the Got Heart team would also hold meetings often through Zoom, a video conferencing software.
Got Heart also used transport-on-demand services heavily to deliver the goods from the communities to Metro Manila. Its variety of choices expanded over the years with Grab, LalaMove, and Angkas offering long-distance transport services.
Aside from communications tools and delivery applications, Melissa stressed that Point of Sale (POS) technology is key to their operations. “Technology is also important in planning for the future, in knowing the trends, such as which products to buy and develop more, what customers want, and how we can relate better to the community in terms of their product development.” Prior to using a POS system, having to manually manage stocks made work tedious for the team. They also didn’t have access to real-time customer insights. It was out of necessity that Got Heart Shop started using a POS System in 2017, otherwise, they wouldn't have been able to scale their product range efficiently. Earth Kitchen, on the other hand, operated with a POS System at the onset. Purchasing and inventory management had certainly been made easier for them.
Dealing with Seasonality
When asked about how they plan for unforeseen circumstances, she was quick to answer, “We don’t really work on things we can’t control.”
Most of the farming communities were largely affected by Typhoon Ulysses. “The weather's a huge factor for them because there was a drought, (then) three consecutive strong typhoons. It’s (always) too dry, or too wet, or too hot. Farmers are most vulnerable among the communities,” she asserted.
One attempt to help the farmers may have gone viral on social media, but she attributed that to luck, another factor she can’t control, “which is why we need to be proactive in asking questions that deal with seasonality of crops.” Got Heart was keen about maximizing the abundant resources of the communities.
Giving the communities an equitable share of the profit was central to Got Heart’s decision making. Citing the economics of supply and demand, Melissa said, “When it’s mango season, prices of mangoes go up and when it’s not in season, the prices of mangoes drop. So how do we make it a point that the community would earn & not lose money when they’re actually harvesting a lot of things?” The questioning led her to open food and soap processing labs to create more value with crops that would otherwise be thrown away due to oversupply. After all, a social enterprise, just like any other business, is after solving problems.
Kindness Begets Kindness
Got Heart’s drive to empower their partner communities kept them on their toes because it was an ever-moving target. “I don’t have a schedule, really,” referring to her ever-changing schedule as she rises to the call to become a connector and an ecosystem architect.
When asked the most important thing she learned the past months, she articulated, “Kindness begets kindness. It’s really important to be sincere with what you’re doing. We’re very limited, but if we share the load, it becomes lighter. From a planned 1,000 bunnies, we ended up creating 50,000 bunnies, to mangoes, to rice.
“It was the kindness of the people in the communities that really got to me. People in government who went out of their way. People I didn’t know, who gave out of their pockets because they were trying to help. We worked tirelessly--day and night, weekends, holidays, churning out many of these products. It wasn’t just me, it was a team effort.”
2020 was a year full of surprises for the Got Heart Foundation. Business might have slowed down in one area, but new enterprises blossomed. They had to lay off more than half their staff, but they relocated them elsewhere and provided jobs for even more. Farmers may have temporarily lost their middlemen, but through social media, they had access to a larger market. Indeed, tough times provide many opportunities to make an impact.
Melissa smiled as she pictured the frontliners in their bunny suits, “It’s not always easy to be kind but it always pays to be kind and it pays back, fifty thousand-fold.”
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