MANILA – As part of the follow-on activities to the 2016 Citi Microentrepreneurship Awards (CMA), a joint undertaking of Citi Philippines, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, and Microfinance Council of the Philippines, the University of the Philippines Institute for Small-Scale Industries (UP ISSI) recently held the CMA – Microenterprise Management & Development Program, an enriching five-day event that brought together business management and finance mentors and the CMA winners, where practical insights on entrepreneurship and personal finance were imparted to participants.
Among the relevant topics covered were Living, Discovering, and Envisioning One’s Entrepreneurial Potential; Operations Management; as well as the 8 P’s of Marketing, Financial Management for Small Businesses.
Each session was capped by intensive workshop sessions wherein participants were given the chance to apply their learnings to real-life situations particularly to their own respective small and micro-enterprises.
Aneth Lim, Public Affairs and Corporate Citizenship Head of Citi Philippines, welcomed the winners on the first training day and congratulated them for taking the first step towards becoming Iskolar ng Bayan (nation’s scholars). “By investing your time on this course, you are able to take advantage of the wealth of academic and practical entrepreneurial knowledge available from UP, the country’s leading academic institution. By the end of this course, you can proudly declare yourselves to be UP graduates.”
Lim also took the opportunity to share Citi’s continuing commitment to microfinance and the CMA program. “Beyond recognizing the country’s micro economic heroes, the CMA program seeks to offer relevant training, coaching and mentoring to our winners. We have seen individuals that were given such access strengthen their ability to grow and sustain their enterprises. As a result, the microentrepreneurs are able to aid and improve the quality of life for their families, but also their communities with new jobs created as a result of enterprise growth.”
UP Diliman Chancellor Dr. Michael L. Tan, a member of the CMA National Selection Committee, also graced the opening ceremony of the training. In his speech, Tan extolled the significance of the said event. “The UP ISSI, which was established to assist and promote the development and growth of the small scale industrial sector, is proud to host the CMA – Microenterprise Management & Development Program. I am certain that the advice and lessons learned across the five days will go a long way in helping the CMA winners.”
