Seeds of Hope and Dreams handpainted dishes
Lola Sayong Smoked Fish Out of Hell
Berta Lopez Feliciano, a very low-key member of the industrialist/media Lopez clan, suddenly finds herself having to answer a question in an interview—and she does so not only competently but also with the candor and conviction that even her sister Gina would be proud of. How does it feel to fill in the shoes of Gina Lopez, the scion-turned-national figure who had impactful advocacies, social projects ranging from prevention of child abuse to nature conservation and environment renewal, to anti-mining (even as member of the Duterte Cabinet) and to sustainable livelihood projects.
“It feels right. I have always wanted to live the tag line of ABS-CBN the Network and Foundation In the Service of the Filipino, I now have the golden opportunity to make it a mission,” says Berta who’s now the managing director of ABS-CBN Lingkod Kapamilya Foundation (ABS-CBN Foundation) which Gina headed until her death in 2019.
“I also stepped into this job when most people retire, so I am at that stage of my life where I am tethered well enough to the ground so I am enjoying the steep learning curve, making so many new friends, and experiencing poignant moments almost daily when I hear stories about the people we help.”
Asked about the extent of personal responsibility she feels about the Foundation, she says: “Although the obvious answer would be to help as many people as we can, I want to empower, nurture, and create as circular a table at the Foundation. I feel that if I am able to provide the opportunities and skills necessary for the people at the Foundation, then we can truly fly. They are the experts, I just need to listen and support.”
The idea of family bonding of the late humanitarian/environmentalist Gina Lopez was to take her mother and siblings (her father, Geny Lopez, the industrialist and media tycoon whose family founded ABS-CBN, died in 1999) to far-flung communities supported by the ABS-CBN Foundation.
In 2013, the family explored Sibuyan Island, Romblon, whose forests Gina was trying to protect. A zip line was built over a river as a livelihood project for the community, meant to attract visitors. Along the embankment was an existing cement structure with a platform, overlooking the gushing waters. Gina and her brother Ernie liked to jump from this structure. They did it many times. Berta Feliciano was scared. It felt like taking off from a competition diving platform. Nevertheless, Berta took the risk and jumped into the cool waters. Gina had always been instrumental in taking Berta out of her comfort zone.
Berta with family: from left, standing, Gabby, Ernie, Mon, Raffy; from left, seated: Berta, mother Conchita Taylor, Gina
“Gina got me to head the SEA (Science, Education and Advocacy) Institute for the Verde Island Passage, the center of the world’s marine diversity (between Luzon and Mindoro.) We have to preserve a source of national pride,” says Berta, referring to one of the foundation’s projects.
After Gina’s death in 2019, keeping her legacy drove Berta to take another leap. Two years ago, Berta, who has been one of the pioneers of yoga in the country, was appointed managing director of ABS-CBN Lingkod Kapamilya Foundation. This NGO focuses on disaster relief operations, children’s welfare and education, and environment protection. An anti-poverty initiative, its G Stuff is a store showcasing products from social enterprises in the foundation’s partner communities.
Giving the Foundation’s partner communities a platform for their products is now the focus of G Stuff, thus the weekend Pop-Up at PowerPlant Rockwell the weekend of April 1-3. Pamayanan is its first onsite pop-up since the lockdowns. G Stuff is being redefined and realigned into an “incubator, mentor and curator” for the social enterprises. G Stuff is being repositioned as an online store for handmade and personalized products—with occasional face-to-face pop-ups.
“No matter how much you help the communities, such as providing food and shelter, if there is no livelihood, then they go back to zero. We can connect them to G Stuff so it can be their platform,” she explains.
Berta practices yoga
Pamayanan features products, from smoked fish to pots, door stoppers
Pamayanan features products from five ventures: Smoked Fish Out of Hell from Lola Sayong Eco Surf Camp; painted pots and dishes, aprons and kitchen mittens, art pillows with upcycled plastic, and plushies by Seeds of Hope and Dreams from Gubat, Sorsogon; JCMM cacao and pili from farmers of Buhatan, Sorsogon City; bags, masks, and runners by the Weaving Arts and Crafts (WACoT) of Tublay, Benguet; and fabric paper weights, door stoppers, and gadget stands from seamstresses of the Tumana Eco Warriors Organization in Marikina.
“We’re selling the community, and encouraging the public to buy local. We want customer feedback so that they could improve their products,” says Berta.
G Stuff was born out of Gina’s trips to the provinces, which eventually provided the merchandise. She set up the store at Rockwell PowerPlant in 2013, offering products with natural ingredients, healing crystals, homeopathy concoctions, organic chocolates, pili nuts and cacao from Sorsogon, and wholesome snacks by chefs. The star merchandise was a VCO-based skin-care line and room scents by a community in Brooke’s Point, Palawan.
Gina’s social track record and humanitarian network have helped promote the G Stuff merchandise. Over time, other social entrepreneurs came out with more premium quality products.
At Pamayanan pop-up at Rockwell, Lorenzo Portento, chairperson, Tuasonville 1 Homeowner’s association, vice president TEWO, and
Elsie Nacilam, chairperson, Silverspring Homeowners association, auditor TEWO
Berta realized it was time G Stuff shifted to the back end. “Instead of selling products, we help these groups in design development, provide volunteer mentors, assist them in opening a GCash account and Facebook page. We likewise help them handle customer relations, finance, governments requirements, and permits, how to make acknowledgement receipts if they haven’t been BIR-registered. The story of the community completes the product. That makes them stand out against the many artisanal products on the market.”
When G Stuff held its virtual pop-up, hosted by Ernie Lopez and wife Michelle, last November, the payments went directly to the participating communities. “We exposed them to the PowerPlant market so they could level up,” she says.
Donors come in, from Alterations Plus to designers Zarah Juan, Lulu Tan-Gan
Berta acknowledges donors who have donated to the livelihood projects, such as Alterations Plus, a chain of clothing repair shops, which gave sewing machines to the seamstresses in Barangay Tumana. Designers such as Zarah Juan, Lulu Tan-Gan, and artist Sequi Cu Unjieng became volunteer mentors for the community projects. The paper weights and door stoppers, made by Tumana, under the guidance of Cu Unjieng, were top sellers in last year’s pop-up.
Accessories designer Zarah Juan collaborated with the WACoT women to produce a sling bag with brightly colored weaves in July 2021. The women were touched when they saw how their weaves were transformed into a world-class fashion accessory. All the 70 bags were sold out in an hour after the launch. This year, designer Lulu Tan-Gan has been working with WACoT to make accessories.
Asked to cite some of the G Stuff products she uses in her everyday life, she mentions some: “I love the door stoppers and paper weights that Sequi Cu Unjieng, an artist, came up with and shared with the Tumana community. I have them at home and use them. Sequi actually made sure that the weight of these door stoppers was sufficient to hold the door. Sequi also came up with another very useful item, a gadget rest which is a triangular pillow that props up your tablet, phone, or even book. And you can have this on your lap while sitting or have it in bed while lying down, It is a soft pillow so you can even use it as such. I have tried the pili pulvoron, and who can resist those? They have a different ending taste to the usual pulvoron!
“There are the usual tablea, ground coffee, and VCO—made by different communities but again artisanal and somehow I feel like it’s so cool that I know who made it as opposed to something churned out in a factory.
“We have ‘paylayok’ type pots and stuff (rings or knick knacks) holders made by two communities. One community makes them without the benefit of a kiln but using the ancient methods of making the piece with a potter’s wheel, drying, and burying in the ground. Then the neighboring community that we help called SEEDS (PO name) creates art on the pots intended for the ever-growing lovers of plants.
“We have a number of items from the Tublay community that I actually visited with Gina a year before she passed. They are being mentored by Lulu Tan Gan but the actual bags are still in the development stage. They still send items. They loom their own materials. We hope to get feedback from the buying public to help us help the communities improve. This is how we plan to incubate the communities by helping them as much as we can with the backend, and we know that they will eventually go off on their own.
“G Stuff will be like Arte Fino where we showcase others, but we will only showcase community-sourced products. And those that we showcase can be either from our communities or not. We are starting to build our directory of vendors. And those that need backend help, that’s the service we offer.”
The fifth of seven children of media magnate Eugenio “Geny” Lopez, Jr. and Conchita LaO Lopez Taylor, Berta went to high school in the San Francisco Bay Area during the Martial Law years, when her clan was in exile, and took up government studies at Connecticut College in the East Coast. She then studied at Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in San Francisco and worked as manager at a Joan & David shoe outlet located at the Ann Taylor shop in Palo Alto. She also ventured into selling Filipino home products.
Berta has always had an entrepreneurial bent. In childhood, she would sell ice candy in the supermarket in Forbes Park, where the family lived. While living in California, Berta was a wholesaler for Filipino products. Since 2006, she and her partners have had Yoga Manila, now a virtual studio.
She returned to the Philippines in the late ‘80s, after the 1986 People Power Revolution. Neither wanting to be idle nor too busy, she went for a job interview with Nestor Padilla, president and CEO of Rockwell Land. She asked if she could work three days a week since she had to take care of two daughters. Predictably, she didn’t get the job.
Berta’s yoga group
Under the tutelage of fitness guru Tina Aboitiz Juan, Berta became an aerobics instructor. Reticent in nature, she gained confidence leading big classes. She then took up yoga and pursued a teacher training course. She and her friends put up Yoga Manila, which had three branches until the pandemic.
“It wasn’t meant as a business. It was something we loved,” she says. Every Sunday, her husband Ting Feliciano and his high school classmates would meet up virtually for a yoga class which warmed them up for their gym workouts.
When Susan Afan, then head of ABS-CBN foundation, was poised to become president of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, Berta’s oldest brother Gabby, then chair of ABS-CBN, seconded Berta to Afan.
‘I felt that I was given a chance to serve the country. Bahala na. I dove in’
“My work has always been entrepreneurial. Now I am taking Gina’s position. Bloodline aside, I was not prepared. Still, I felt that I was given a chance to serve the country. Bahala na. I dove in,” says Berta. By January 2021, Berta assumed foundation work.
Her older sister ran the foundation instinctively. “Gina meditated a lot. Intuition guided her. In the end, she would say we’re all about love and respecting nature. Yet, her words of wisdom were practical,” she says. “I’m more careful, and I read everything. Gina was fearless. I’m learning not to be afraid.”
Asked how the Foundation work, in her generation, would continue the Lopez family’s legacy of commitment to service of the country, she says, “We focus on people’s needs and listen to them and often our entry point is unfortunately disaster areas. We focus our micro lens, the details—yet our goal is always to help the most by being able to replicate our work, being able to empower the communities so that they thrive even when we exit, but our Northstar will always be to listen and help each and every community discover the solutions.”
Berta gets enthusiastic about the foundation. The conversation begins with G Stuff, which later develops into the foundation’s many functions. It has been quick on its feet for disaster relief. When Taal Volcano started acting up, the foundation looked for possible evacuation centers and prepared relief goods. Bantay Bata, the social welfare program, has expanded to include mental health and discussions with parents on the consequences of virtual sexual exploitation. After Typhoon Odette, the foundation facilitated counselling services to help victims cope with the trauma.
In Bantay Kalikasan, the foundation’s Nature Watch program, the NGO taught communities such as Lobo, Batangas how to protect mangroves which not only guard against the elements but also become a source of livelihood for food and tourism.
Programa Genyo helps high school students in vocational education and career counselling.
In hindsight, Berta says she’s grateful to be working with talented and cooperative individuals. “My eyes are on nation-building. ABS-CBN’s motto has always been In the Service of the People (“Andito kami para sa ‘yo.”). We extend our help further, especially to those communities that don’t get access,” says Berta.
After all that ABS-CBN has been made to go through in recent years, what can the Foundation do to make a difference in current Philippine society?
She gives her insights: “The pandemic gave many people the realization that our individual actions affect all, and there is a pressing need to collaborate, to join forces for impactful solutions to arise. Individual actions—COVID clearly showed how our behavior and actions affected others, and that transmission of the virus could only be controlled through scientific knowledge and civil responsibility to make the greater needs of the many a priority.
“Collaboration—community pantries manifested the inherent good in all and this was only possible if we helped each other help others, we could not do it alone for long, we needed to make an unspoken pact to help—together.
“We are gearing up to do just this. Create a digital platform where we use existing assets such as our Bantay Bata 163 hotline and turn it into more of a 911 for all our various advocacies, from Children’s Rights to Education to Environment to Disaster Relief. We want to be accessible to all and help, but we cannot do this alone. We will be the touch point, but we hope to get as many other NGOs, government agencies, CSRs, whoever is needed to commit to provide the help needed. In other words, we will continue to do what we do but with partners since we cannot physically be in all places at the same time with the limited resources we have. This is the collaborate portion of the equation.
“The individual actions—we hope that through our varying advocacies, we are able to help communities make connections with their real-life situations and alternative ways of living using science-based data. We want to make their lives better without lecturing but sharing how this could be possible.”
