APALIT, PAMPANGA -- MANUEL V. Pangilinan, the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. and Smart Communications chair, made his 62nd birthday more special by celebrating it with elementary school students in his Pampanga hometown.

After a concelebrated Mass at St. Peter’s Parish, Pangilinan presided over the donation of P2 million and 14 computers to the local government of Apalit by the PLDT-Smart Foundation (PSF), which he chairs.

The money will go to the construction of classrooms, said Apalit Mayor Oscar Tetangco Jr. who received the check.

Two of the computers will be used by the town government while the rest will be installed at the Dominador Pangilinan Computer Learning Center at the Jose Escaler Elementary School. The center is named after Pangilinan’s father, who hailed from Sulipan, one of the town’s barangays.

Bishop Roberto Mallari had invited Pangilinan and other PLDT and Smart executives to “reach out to the poor, share [their] treasures and resources to alleviate their plight.”

Pangilinan said he was “very proud to be a kabalen (a person from Pampanga).”

“We came to Apalit to share our blessings with the people. The best way to address poverty is through the creation of jobs and Apaliteños must rise,” he said.

Time stood still

“This is also part of my commitment to the people of Apalit. It is more important to help create jobs because it seems that time has stood still in the town. I’d like to see it [attain] more economic progress,” he said.

His grandfather, Benito Pangilinan, and grandmother, Florencia Reyes, were public school teachers in Sulipan. Benito became a superintendent of public schools and education secretary in the Quirino administration.

His father, Dominador, rose through the ranks, starting as a messenger at Philippine National Bank and retiring as senior vice president. Dominador later became president of Traders Royal Bank.

Pangilinan, who also chairs the Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP), the country’s largest corporate-led foundation, said corporate social responsibility work (CSR) was “important.”

Business logic

“Purely from a business perspective, if we can help the poor, the more income they will have, the more they will have the ability to buy our products and services. That’s the logic behind our assistance,” he said.

At the Jose Escaler Gym where he served snacks to students, Pangilinan said many sectors needed help and education was a priority program for the PSF.

PSF president Butch Meily announced the P2 million donation to help ease the town’s ratio of one classroom to 80 students. The classrooms will be built in coordination with the PBSP.

The PSF, founded in 1994, was involved in microfinance, sports, education, youth rehabilitation, community building, poverty alleviation, disaster risk management and support for the arts, said Meily.

In a later interview in Manila, Pangilinan said that it was his work with the PBSP that really awakened him to doing more than just giving money.

More active

He said that at the Ateneo de Manila University, where he took a degree in economics, and in Hong Kong where he headed the First Pacific conglomerate, his way of helping was in the nature of giving donations to different charities, such as the Bayanihan Center for overseas Filipino workers in Hong Kong.

But starting in 2000 when he got exposed to the work of the PBSP, he realized that there was an urgent need to get involved in projects that would have a direct impact on alleviating poverty. Thus he became a more active participant, donating not just money but also his time, effort, attention and expertise.

Pangilinan said the turning point for him was Payatas where, during one of the regular feeding and medical missions of the PSF, he did not just see but also smelled poverty. The businessman in him then questioned why, if everybody seems to know that there is a problem like poverty in Payatas, why the problem was still around after so many years.

“It’s pretty much a business mentality, that if there’s a problem, we should be able to solve it. Like for three years, we have a feeding mission in Navotas. Every time we go, it’s flooded. Then you ask yourself, this problem must have been there forever, why can’t we do something about it?” Pangilinan said.

“I think I spend about 15 percent of my time on projects that are not related to PLDT or First Pacific,” said Pangilinan, who is also involved in sports through the Samahang Basketball ng Pilipinas as well as the boxing and badminton leagues. He said he has stopped counting the projects that he is involved in.

Known for being a workaholic and one of the country’s highest-paid executives, Pangilinan said he allocates a good portion of his valuable time for CSR work because he gets a different kind of satisfaction from knowing that what he does could change someone’s life for the better.

“You get a great deal of satisfaction knowing that you have managed to change even one life in your lifetime for the better. There’s a great deal of satisfaction knowing that someone you don’t even know managed to do better because of something you did,” he said.

Discipline of business

The particular challenge of working with the PBSP was in being able to use the discipline of business in running a social institution. This means clear and transparent reporting of where the funds are used, setting tangible targets and measures of success in projects involving key causes, such as poverty alleviation, environmental protection and enterprise development.

Pangilinan admitted, however, that he had some difficulty adjusting to the culture of foundation work as he is used to the PLDT and First Pacific system of zeroing in on performance measures and accountability.

“It’s hard for me to accept a 10-page report that lists accomplishments. So you have to force the PBSP and the others to quantify their objectives and measure their performance,” he said.

“Words are good, but it is easy to invent the words,” he said.

How to solve problem

He does realize that poverty is a much more complex issue than a problem in telecommunications. But at the end of the day, people should come together, discuss the problem and come up with a solution, he said.

“In business, if there is a problem, there must be a solution,” Pangilinan said.

He hopes that through his work with the PSF and PBSP, he is doing his part in finding the solution.