IT ALL STARTED with a single question: “Why are there poor people in a country with so much resources?” For Ruth Callanta, the search for answers to this question led to a two-decade-long journey that brought her from the comforts of a middle-class home in Manila to universities and higher learning institutions where she took up development studies, and finally, to some of the Philippines’ most depressed areas where the founded an organization that today supports the micro-businesses of hundreds of entrepreneurial poor. Now the founding president of the Center for Community Transformation and 2005 Woman Entrepreneur of the Year, Callanta shares the answers she learned through her journey.

“I was raised in a middle-class Christian family where everyone lived in harmony,” she begins It was an ideal family setting, she recalls, where there was an abundance of food on the table, where it was common for family members to share possessions and resources with one another, and where generosity went beyond the walls of the home to outsiders who were in need. So when the young Callanta took an undergraduate degree in anthropology in the University of the Philippines, she was surprised to discover a world where suffering existed, where the poor had nothing to eat and no homes to stay in. Thus, started her search for a way to help these people break the bondage of poverty.

“I thought I could help by volunteering in a charitable organization,” she says. However, she soon realized these organizations could only provide short-term relief from poverty—the donations of food and clothes to the poor may be enjoyed for a while, but when the food is consumed and the clothes worn out, the poor once more feel the hunger pangs and the cold. It seemed like an endless cycle. She knew then that short-term solutions would not be enough to put an end to such a long-term problem as poverty.

Soon, she pursued graduate studies and academic work in higher learning institutions. She enrolled in a master’s degree program in community development and social work in UP while working as research assistant at the Philippine Business for Social Progress. Later, she took up a master’s degree in management at the Asian Institute of Management, the same institution where she became part of a team that developed the curriculum for a Master in Development Management program.

At UP and AIM, Callanta learned the languages of both business and social development, allowing her to “unite the concepts of business with the heart of social work.” She then introduced this model to the poor by establishing micro-finance programs for them, and equipping them with the skills for money-making.

“But I soon realized,” she recalls, “that even if you lend money to the poor, for as long as there is no real transformation in the hearts of these individuals, the money will only be used for selfish interests.”

Founding the CCT

Callanta’s teaching job at AIM provided her several opportunities for service, one of which was a stint as CEO of the Asian Resource Center. When this closed down after a year of operation, she incorporated the Center for Community Transformation in 1992, and absorbed the 13 staff of the ARC—paying their salaries initially out of her own pocket.

The first funding for CCT came when San Miguel Corporation hired the organization as consultant at a time when SMC was reducing its manpower. CCT provided entrepreneurial training for the retrenched SMC employees, teaching them the skills needed to generate income for themselves and eventually establish their own businesses. Soon, the Center entered into another contract with SMC’s subsidiary, La Tondeña Inc., whose factory in Tondo was about to be transferred to Pangasinan. CCT was commissioned to do a research study on the effects of the factory’s transfer on the immediate community where it operated. Results showed that the community surrounding the factory was dependent on the workers for their livelihood and income: the sari-sari stores and carinderias around the factory were established to cater to La Tondeña employees.

With the community’s micro-businesses in peril of closing down due to the factory’s transfer, CCT started its own community-based program that equipped the micro-entrepreneurs with tools to enable them to find other ways of generating income. Seeing that CCT could already sustain its own operations and start its own community-based programs, Callanta enrolled in the micro-finance program of the United Nations Development Programme, which led to the formation of the CCT Credit Cooperative.

The micro-finance programs of CCT soon gave birth to several other ministries that provide a holistic approach to poverty alleviation. A scholarship fund was set up for the education needs of the beneficiaries’ children. A housing program was initiated where men are trained to do carpentry, plumbing and electrical works—with the possibility of landing contractual jobs in the housing projects of CCT’s corporate partners.

Trainings are provided to the poor to enable them to live sustainable lives, allowing them to continuously earn to support their families through the capital provided by CCT’s micro-finance program. A trading company was established to provide low-cost products to the poor, making available to them quality products at affordable prices. Also, CCT provides a way for the poor to have social security and medical benefits by facilitating for them their contributions to the Social Security System (SSS) and Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (Philhealth).

“As we help increase their income,” Callanta explains, “we also help decrease their expenses, and give them access to social security for their future.”

But beyond the poverty alleviation programs that she started through CCT, Callanta makes sure that the communities who benefit from their programs experience real transformation. “No real transformation can take place unless the heart is changed,” she says, “and the only person who can change the hearts of men is none other than Christ.”

Callanta believes that it is because of the values formation programs of CCT that all its members have been faithful in paying their loans and their contributions. And thanks to this, the organization is highly liquid, enabling it to expand its operations. Each membership meeting starts with a Bible study, where the values of stewardship, honesty and integrity are taught to the CCT members. The organization also partners with Christian churches that conduct the Bible studies and assist in CCT’s community programs. As a result, CCT sites have become thriving communities of micro-entrepreneurs who are honest and ethical in their deals, and trustworthy in their partnerships—which lead to their small businesses prospering.

What Callanta started as a small organization with only 13 staff in 1992 has become a big enterprise with around 850 full-time workers, 130 branches and more than a hundred thousand beneficiaries nationwide. The rapid expansion and growth of CCT and the blossoming micro-businesses of its beneficiaries validate Callanta’s claim that “the poor can pay for their own development and non-profit organizations can achieve sustainability without having to rely on grants and foreign funding.”

The Road Ahead

Even after the success of CCT’s work among the entrepreneurial poor, Callanta’s journey has not stopped. She continues to look for ways to expand the organization and reach out to more urban poor communities. Her future plans for the organization includes the construction of the CCT Training Development Institute building where micro-entrepreneurs can learn the skills that will enable them to sustain their businesses. “If those who work in big business corporations can avail of education such as MBAs and graduate studies that allow them to become effective managers,” she explains, “the Institute will do the same for the entrepreneurial poor.” The Institute will provide the micro-entrepreneurs with livelihood skills that they need in operating—and, possibly, expanding—their small businesses.

Callanta also partners with big business corporations who can provide low-cost products, training and other business opportunities to the micro-entrepreneurs. “There are a lot of possibilities for micro-businesses,” she says. “They can be both the market of the big businesses’ low-cost products, or they can also be the suppliers, just like what Cityland (Development Corp.) is doing, when they contract the people they train in some of their housing projects.”

There is also a plan to develop industries that produce indigenous Philippine products such as weaving, dyeing, and pottery. This program by CCT seeks to develop these home-grown industries in the provinces by promoting products that are distinctively Filipino. The program is a response to the current influx of affordable imported products from other Asian countries, notably China, which has significantly reduced the interest of Filipino consumers in the country’s native products. If Filipino consumers patronize Philippine-made products, local industries that can actually compete in the global market can be promoted.

Both Callanta’s passion and innovation may have won her the title of the “2005 Woman Entrepreneur of the Year” from Ernst and Young, but it is her vision that continues to drive her onward in her pursuit for lasting poverty-eradication solutions “It’s a vision I received while reading Isaiah 65,” she notes. Quoting verses from her favorite Bible chapter, she describes “a world where no infant will die of malnutrition; where the old will live up to a hundred years; where people will live in houses they built and eat the fruits of their labor.”

She adds that all these things are actually indicators of development that are used by several non-profit organizations. She points out: “The concept of development has been there even during Old Testament times.”

Her journey may have been long and challenging, but by leaving the comforts of her middle-class home to embark on a search to eradicate poverty, Callanta has helped transform depressed areas into thriving communities of micro-entrepreneurs—and has, thus, enabled these people to experience for themselves the same comfortable life and ideal home she knew as a child.