SUZAINE KYLE M. Pador started studying when she was only three. Now five years old, she can not only read the alphabet, count to over 100, and spell her name, she can also solve simple mathematical problems, read J.K.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books on her own, answer e-mails while surfing the Internet, and accurately belt out the lyrics of songs by Alicia Keyes, Alanis Morisette, and the Filipino all-female band Aegis (accompanied by dance steps she choreographed herself).

While she’s not exactly a genius, she’s not a typical child either. For instance, she is wont to say that children her age shouldn’t waste time gallivanting. “Dapat mag-aral habang bata pa para maraming matutunan (We should go to school while still young, so we can learn a lot),” she says, a statement you’re not likely to hear from a five-year-old, but will definitely get from her mother Suzette, an educator by profession.

The younger a child starts getting an education the better prepared for life he or she becomes is not exactly a new concept. This was, in fact, what prompted the establishment in the 1960s of the federally funded Head Star program in the US that seeks to help children overcome cognitive, social, emotional, and physical deficiencies that usually result from growing up in economically deprived homes. According to this concept, by fostering their general well-being and enhancing their school readiness, children who study early gain the full benefit of schooling, which, in turn, enables them to be more successful in life later on.

This is the underlying concept of Starbucks Coffee’s “Spark Hope” (SH) program. Conducted in collaboration with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), SH is a “giving-back-to-the-community program” that allows each Starbucks store in the Philippines to adopt a barangay (village), and provide for the early childhood care and stimulation of children below six years old living in there.

CSR Innovation

“SH is an innovation in terms of corporate social responsibility,” says Krie Lopez, CSR manager of Rustan Coffee which runs Starbucks Coffee in the Philippines.
Every Starbucks store has a SH corner that displays photos of the store’s adopted barangay, as well as information on UNICEF's early childhood care and development program. A customer can support the effort by either dropping contributions in the donation box, or earn stamps for purchased drinks. After earning a specified number of stamps, a customer can redeem an annual planner that results in UNICEF receiving a P50 donation for every planner redeemed.

“This way, as we link the actual retail stores—in this case Starbucks outlets—to remote and impoverished barangays in the Philippines, we get the people working in the store and also their customers involved in the program,” Lopez notes.

Since the SH program started in November 2004, it has already raised over P2 million, which UNICEF disburses to the barangay beneficiaries to equip day-care centers, train pre-school teachers, or teach literacy to the parents.

“Our ultimate goal is to have a one-to-one ratio, where one store really adopts one barangay,” Lopez says.

Currently, Starbucks has 92 stores in the Philippines. There are, however, only nine adopted barangays, namely San Isidro in Catangian, Masbate; Buhangin in Baler, Aurora; Taytay in Guiuan, Eastern Samar; San Roque in Mercedes, Camarines Norte; Kalaong in Maitum, Saranggani; Bangkerohan in Catamaran, Northern Samar; Mozzozzin Sur in Sta. Maria, Isabela; Cadawinonan in Dumaguete, Negros Occidental; and Crossing Simuay in Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao.

“So it’s around 10 stores for every barangay at the moment while we are still trying to iron out the communications part of the program,” Lopez says. “That is part of the challenge: how to keep ourselves updated with the progress of the barangays, since some of them are really far, and some barangay (officials) aren’t as involved as we want them to be.”

She elaborates: “Education for very young kids is a very hard concept for many in the provinces to accept. I guess it’s hard to actually understand the effects of early education, because, maybe for them, what’s more important is getting food on the table and all those things. So, for me, this is the biggest challenge—keeping in close contact with the barangays, and being on the same page with each of them.”

The original plan was for Starbucks to give back to the community where it has a store operating. “But we’ve come to realize that the people who really need our help are the people who are difficult to reach,” Rustan Coffee’s CSR manager points out. “And even if it compromises the business model of Starbucks, we decided to make the change so we could help those who really need our help.”

More than Coffee

The focus on providing primary education has actually been “debated even by the people in Rustan Coffee,” Lopez says. “But we found after researching that with early learning, brain stimulation becomes an easy and highly effective way of giving children a better chance of succeeding in school and in life.”

Early childhood (ages 0-6 years old), a very crucial formative stage marked by rapid mental and physical growth, is the period when 90% of a person's brain is formed.

While a coffee company doesn’t seem to have any business dabbling in education, Starbucks has already incorporated it into its CSR efforts around the world. This is evident in the acronym it has come up with: LEO, where “L” stands for literacy (and, thus, education), “E” for environment (for its environmental efforts which include giving away for free used beans which are converted into compost), and “O” for origins (for the support extended to the communities where the Starbucks coffee beans are grown).

“Starbucks is trying not to be just about coffee. As we say, we are not a coffee business serving people, we are a people business serving coffee. And part of the guiding principle of Starbucks is to contribute positively to the community and the environment—that’s really what’s at the core of the business of Starbucks,” Lopez says. “So whatever we do, whether it be purchasing supplies or training people, we always try to incorporate reaching out and giving back to the communities.”

In the Philippines, there is no effective national educational program for children in the 0-6 years age bracket. According to the records of the Department of Education (DepEd), there were only 32,787 day-care centers nationwide as of 1999, all of them located in barangays with schools. This is still far from the ideal target of, at least, one day-care center for each of the country’s 41,940 barangays.

“In the Philippines, the highest dropout rate in schools occurs in the first grade. From one third to half of the children in the first grade get kicked out of school simply because they aren’t prepared for it,” says Lopez, who adds that, according to DepEd’s 1994 figures, only 13 out of 100 children who enrolled in Grade 1 qualified for Grade 2.

“And when they get kicked out of school, that’s it for them,” she notes. “They don’t have a chance to go back to school anymore. This is our small way of trying to change that, of trying to increase the retention rates in schools.”

For its part, UNICEF has chosen to focus on early learning for the next five years. It is widely acknowledged that both the short-term and long-term benefits gained from investing in early childhood programs far outweigh the costs. In the Philippines, a 1997 study (Alonzo, De los Angeles-Bautista, and R. Myers), for example, noted that the programs increase the economic productivity of children who complete school, and of women who are able to work and earn additional income for the family because of childcare support services.

According to various studies, other benefits of early education include fewer referrals for remedial classes or special education among graduates; fewer retentions, with pre-school graduates less likely to repeat grades; higher grades; greater social and emotional maturity; more frequent high school graduation; greater academic motivation, on-task behavior, capacity for independent work, and time spent on homework; and lower incidence of illegitimate pregnancy, drug abuse, and delinquent acts.

Other studies have revealed that once out of school, young people who had attended pre-school continued to do better in life than those who had not. Among others, they were found to have higher employment rates and better earnings; fewer arrests and antisocial acts; and better relationships with family members, a higher incidence of volunteer work, and more frequent church attendance.

While most of these studies were done overseas, where early childhood learning is given more importance, Lopez believes that “early education is not a function of culture.”

“And with researches and studies proving how effective it is for children, it is high time that we give early education the same importance, too,” she says.

Bearing Fruits

The good news is early education is already becoming common in the Philippines, albeit slowly. “Surprisingly, even the nine initially selected participant barangays of the SH program already have pre-schools,” Lopez says. “The problems lie in the availability of the software and the hardware, which is where we’re focusing on now.”

SH, like UNICEF, does not “give money to build schools,” she stresses. “That is not part of the UNICEF agenda, and neither is it ours. What we’re doing is providing day-care centers with materials they can use, and training the teachers as well.”

Considering that SH is only just a year old, for Lopez, the “most important thing that has happened so far is that the responses in the barangays have been more than we’ve expected.” In the nine adopted barangays, 16 day-care centers have been fully equipped benefiting some 350 children, at least two training sessions for day-care center workers per center were completed in 2005, the enrollment rate has almost doubled from approximately from 11% to 40% of the barangay population of children within the 0-6 years range, and, as already mentioned, over P2 million has been raised for the project.

“Most important of all, the parents and barangay officials are now more involved than ever, considering they never cared for early education before,” she says. “In one barangay, parents and barangay officials worked together to repaint the school, rebuild the roofs to stop the leaking, and cement the floorings. This is what we want to achieve—we’re just here as a catalyst for changes that can happen to villages when the people work together.”

Lopez says another big challenge is finding a way to communicate to Starbucks customers the results of the efforts that they—through their contributions and stamp purchases—have become integral parts of. “We’re trying to filter the data to present what will inspire the customers to continue helping,” she notes.

This is not just to enable Starbucks to adopt more barangays, but also to link the barangays closer with the customers. “We know there are many barangays in need of help, and we can’t serve them all,” Lopez points out. “So, for example, if a barangay needs a water system, a customer may be able to help.”

This has actually already happened, when a Starbucks customer, a CEO of a water utility, approached the company to help a barangay in need. “This is what we want to do, to serve as a link between the barangays and the customers who may be able to help,” Lopez adds.

Starbucks has always been criticized as a prime example of aggressive commercialization with its presence at every corner of practically every city in the world. But Lopez sees this in another light. “Starbucks has always tried to be the third place where people hang out in—first is the home, second is the office or school, and third is Starbucks,” she says. “We strive to create communities and build communities—so if by being third place, we help create communities, I don’t think having a Starbucks in every corner is a bad thing.”