Facing a Defining Year in 2022
Sixto Donato C. Macasaet
In many ways, COVID-19 has changed the world since it surfaced late in 2019 and took over the globe in 2020. Two years since, we are now on the way to recovery, and we are at a crossroads. In 2022, we face a defining year. This year will prove if the lessons that we learned from the still ongoing pandemic will push us to live and work better, and hopefully, make more informed choices especially in the context of the coming national and local elections.
At FSSI, choosing our country’s leaders is not only a matter of voting wisely, but of voting consciously: conscious for the enterprises that we serve, conscious for the environment, and conscious for the marginalized. At the core of FSSI’s work are people and the environment and, in that light, an honest and efficient government centered on people and sustainable development is vital for us.
To that end, we are sharing in this e-newsletter a statement from the Catholic Educational Association of the Philippines or CEAP, encouraging the public to have moral courage as they cast their votes in May. Further, in and out of the pandemic, is the ever-present call to preserve our environment. Along with CEAP’s statement, we are also sharing with you a call from our member organizations the National Secretarial for Social Action (NASSA)/Caritas Philippines and the National Council of the Churches in the Philippines (NCCP), advocating for the climate crisis to become front and center in choosing the next country’s leaders.
In this issue, we are also sharing some updates from FSSI as we engage more social enterprises. We are strengthening our on-the-ground presence in Western Visayas and Negros Oriental through a local marketing coordinator. We are also regularly and more frequently holding information sessions online to introduce our Foundation and the services we provide. We invite you to extend this invitation to your network should there be those in need of support to grow their enterprise.
Connected to that, we are glad to announce that we have secured a partnership with our member organization, the Alliance of Philippine Partner in Enterprise Development (APPEND) for their financial application AppendPay. We believe this to be a bold move towards the digitization of the microfinance sector, and we hope that our support will boost its reach through the FSSI network.
Two of our FSSI staff are joining the Association of Foundation (AF)’s Lead to Serve program that will, among others, allow us to assess our leadership and organizational capacity through a Capacity Assessment Tool developed for civil service organizations, a copy of which is available for your reference below under Knowledge Resources.
We have also shared some updates on several relief efforts for those affected by Typhoon Odette and how we can continue to help.
It has been tough going for the past two years, with many of us at the forefront of the pandemic and a slew of natural disasters, all of which happened under a fragile and fraying fabric of society. There is a lot is at stake in 2022. But I am hopeful that we will all come together to learn from the collective challenges that we faced and work together for genuine and transformative change. After all, it is our choices which will define us.
