CentroMigrante wins MIT 100K   For a business idea that was just discovered on a "serendipity walk," (see this article) there is no doubt that Centromigrante has made a giant leap by winning the grand prize from the prestigious MIT 100K Entrepreneurship Competition last week in Cambridge, Massachussettes. This is the first time a  Filipino team has taken on this 100K race, a competition that might as well be compared to a marathon for its magnitude and prestige. An advantage arose for the Pinoy team when MIT decided to shift course this year and open 100K to a development track.

The building of transient homes for seafares in the Philippines is the team´s running proposal. "As many as one million Filipinos a year spend up to six months away from their home provinces, looking for jobs as seafarers in Manila´s port areas with most of them living in shanties under depressed and undignified living conditions." My hats off to the team! Besting almost 165 groups for the catchprize, Centromigrante has already helped almost 80,000 Pinoy seafarers with their pilot project in Manila, providing architectural solutions and cheap housing units combined with a self-help program that allows them to become productive workers. This is a unique program directed towards Pinoy OFWS, who are ironically called the new heroes for helping the country economically stay afloat, but are the most ignored lot in the Philippines. The 30K prize will be used for the first phase of the project to be launched later this year.

Centromigrante is composed of talented Pinoy social entrepreneurs Neil Ruiz, Artessa Saldivar-Sali, Tina LaForteza and spearheaded by team leader Illac Diaz, a research fellow at MIT, who also happened to win two other important MIT competitions which we will feature here in the future. Illac was kind enough to let us know personally by sending an e-mail to La Solidaridad that they´ve won saying, "this is for the migrants in the Philippines, the OFWs that keep the country alive with their remittances, and how it is an honor to be able to improve their lives in Manila."

The Filipino team:

TEAM :
Illac Diaz (CEO) is a 2005 Fulbright-Humphrey Research Fellow in the Special Program for Urban and Regional Studies in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT. He is a graduate of the Asian Institute of Management. In 2005, he became the first recipient for Ten Outstanding Young Men (TOYM) for Social Entrepreneurship.

Neil Ruiz (VP - Government and Corporate Relations) is a Ph.D. candidate in political economy at MIT. He is completing a dissertation on the political economy of labor migration and higher education in developing societies. He was a former consultant at the Asian Development Bank and the Migration Policy Institute.

Tina Laforteza (VP - Strategy/Business Development) is an internal strategy consultant for a Fortune 100 automotive company where she assists management in dealing with complex strategic, financial and operational issues, provides strategic assessments of business opportunities, and builds analytical models to support decision making. She obtained an MBA in 2004
from the MIT Sloan School of Management where she concentrated on Operations and Manufacturing Strategy.

Artessa Saldivar-Sali (VP - Education & Training / Infrastructure) is a Professor at the Department of Civil Engineering of the University of the Philippines. She has a Master of Engineering degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering from MIT.

Chester Yu (VP - Support Services/Career Management) brings sales, operations, and shipping industry experience to the team. He worked in chartering, trading, and shipping operations with the Southwest Maritime Group, a Philippine shipping conglomerate that includes Southfield.

Watch the award ceremonies here. 

*Centromigrante is also currently seeking more capital investment to reach their target of raising $200,000 for the project and hopes to collaborate with other Pinoy investors on this social venture. Centromigrante can be reached at centromigrante@gmail.com

written by Tuesday Gutz (Tuesday Gutierrez)