PHOTO ESSAY

The Academy for Creating Enterprise: Lifting the Poor to Prosperity

By Meridian Magazine · July 25, 2010

Text by Maurine Proctor
Photography by Scot Facer Proctor Note from the Proctors: This past two weeks we have been in the Philippines not only to cover the temple dedication of the Cebu City temple, but also to introduce you to a large segment of the Church—our Filipino brothers and sisters, many who suffer from profound poverty. In our international reports and travels, we have often worked with organizations seeking to help the poor, but none has impressed us more than The Academy for Creating Enterprise for two reasons.

First, so many organizations who seek to do charitable works, unfortunately simply enlarge the problem, because they do not know the Lord’s way, which is to empower the people to help themselves. This academy empowers people. To use Yeat’s phrase, “Education is not the filling of buckets, but the lighting of fires.”

Second, the Academy specifically targets educating and mentoring returned missionaries with important business skills and an empowered mindset so that they can overcome poverty, and thereby be able to raise strong families and serve in the Church.

So many Meridian readers write us and ask how they can help our impoverished fellow Saints, the number of which will only grow as the gospel continues to spread through Africa, Asia and Latin America. This is how. You can read more at the website creatingenterprise.org or click here to donate. Learn about the organization here in our report.

Elder David E. LeSueur of the Seventy remembers a recurring scene when he was a mission president in Manila, one that haunted him. This scene, which troubled him, came when he was to say goodbye to the missionaries whom he had carefully loved and mentored for two years.
He had watched them and often paired American missionaries with those he called his “Filipino warriors.” The Filipinos would look at their American companion and wish they had their confidence, their teaching skills, their scripture knowledge. In turn the American missionaries would see the naturally flowing, almost genetic love, kindness, happiness, and indomitable spirits of the Filipinos and wish they had those gifts. By the time the mission was finished, both had developed these skills, learned at the loving hand of one another. Both had been mentored and grown. But then came the parting, and this is what disturbed then President LeSueur. He said, “These missionaries became your sons and daughters, and I would look at the American missionaries who were about to go home. They had futures already set up for them. Mom had enrolled them in college. Dad had ideas for where they could get a part-time job. They had confidence and high expectations about their future.
“For the Filipinos, who had also worked hard and grown tremendously, who knew how to set goals and live high standards just as their American counterparts had, the sense was so different. They had quiet looks of anxiety and uncertainty when I asked about their future. No one would be mentoring or helping them at home. They had little to anticipate in their future. They were returning to poverty and perhaps no further education. It was difficult to live with my emotions, when you consider all that they were and all that the Lord had invested in them.
“We don’t have a more magnificent asset in the Church than these men and women, who go on missions and come home to nothing and little hope. What do you do?” What did most missionaries do? They would likely be unemployed. They might not have fare to get to church, certainly not enough fare to do their home or visiting teaching. They might have to take turns with other family members in going to church because of the expense.
If they married, they might do as Peter Caro did, and move with his wife into a pig sty. If they did find work, they might bring home less than two dollars a day peddling a tricycle with a cab for passengers. If they didn’t they might join others who scavenge for food at Smoky Mountain, Manila’s infamous trash dump, hanging up their dark suit and shoes for the clothing of disappointment and humiliation.
Steve and Bette Gibson had also noted the plight and dashed potential of the returned missionaries of the Philippines, so they did something bold and smart. It was bold because they packed up boxes of training materials, 15 used lap top computers and all of the suitcases they had and moved from Provo to Cebu where they lived for 19 months to form The Academy for Creating Enterprise. What’s more however, was that it was smart.
They knew that what these returned missionaries needed was not a hand out; it was empowerment, a chance to learn the business and entrepreneurial skills that would change their lives and the future generations.
Poverty in the Philippines does not come because the people are lazy or stupid. All you have to do is land at the Manila airport at 5 in the morning and drive the streets to see how diligent they are. No one works harder, but the Philippines is simply a place where jobs are few and pay is scant.
One of the Philippines regular exports is its people who, not finding work at home, scour the world for some small opportunity to help them survive. Filipinos are the eager help on cruise lines, shoved into small compartments at night and away from their family for ten months of the year. They are the domestic help of the world. Currently 1,500 Latter-day Saint Filipino women are working as domestic help in Hong Kong, 600 of them mothers. These conditions fragment families, mar sometimes fragile bonds.
Their plight is also not because they are uneducated. The Philippines turns out 26,000 new nurses a year and can only hire 1,000 of those—and of those that find work at home, they must work the first six months for free. One woman with a Ph.D in organic chemistry spent her time herding her father’s goats because she could get no work. Those in the Church whose ancestors were from the coal mines and sweat shops of England or Europe may think that joining the Church alone will guarantee that the next generation will prosper. That is probably not true for this new generation of converts in developing nations whose structure does not so readily allow prosperity. BYU researchers have concluded that by 2030, 85% of Church members will be in Latin America, Africa and Asia where large segments of the population live in poverty.
Church members will likely be those who are the impoverished in these nations, because the gospel resonates with the poor and needy much more than with the prosperous, proud and powerful. Enter The Academy for Creating Enterprise, which began in the Philippines 10 years ago and has now moved on to also include branches in Mexico and Brazil. Other countries are clamouring for the academy to come there as well.
The goal is to empower returned missionaries with the skills to be able to prosper in the economy of their country with the intention that they will then be able to arise as leaders in the Church and parents at home, who can then pass these enterprising abilities and the blessings of more abundant living on to their children.
Since there are not jobs available in the Philippines, returned missionaries (both men and women) are taught how to be enterprising and create businesses for themselves with a five-volume curriculum called “Where There are No Jobs.” Andy Barfuss, CEO of the Academy, said, “The only way they are going to be able to have families and serve in the Church is if they create their own businesses.”
For most of the 1,850 graduates of the program in the last ten years, these skills have been their ticket to prosperity. Anywhere you go in the Philippines among Church members, the academy, which they fondly called ACE, is well known, and people love to say with pride that they are an “ACE graduate.”Among the graduates are the founders of entrepreneurial businesses that employ as many as 200 others. At a recent gathering, 80 alumni reported 460 employees working in their companies.Their companies are varied. Rebecca Olongayo is in dried fish distribution, Regino Bayani has a pharmacy, Gildo Bello buys and sells cattle, Mercy Yap is in hardware.
Co-founder Steve Gibson noted that President Hinckley understood it best when he spoke of poverty occurring because of a lack of opportunity. To which Gibson said, “I would add to that two other ideas, lack of the ability to recognize opportunity and lack of knowing what to do about opportunity are important.” That is what the academy supplies for its eager students.
People who are desperate and live at a survival level cannot arise as leaders or serve their community. Their souls are too preoccupied with merely making it day by day. Andy Barfuss said they like to remind the students that the good Samaritan was able to serve the man on the road, who was beaten and left for dead, because he had a donkey, he had means to pay an innkeeper, and he had the flexibility in his schedule to be able to take the time to stop.Opening OpportunitiesHere’s how they transform the situation for returned missionaries. In a two-month course at their Cebu campus, a class of returned missionaries are taught both a set of new skills about how to start a business, and how to change their mindset to believe that prosperity is not only possible but important. They also offer a one-week intensive program for Church leaders who cannot break away for two months and two-week onsite sessions for those in more remote areas who are not able to come to Cebu.
Barfuss said that one of the highest priorities in instruction was to help the students change their mindset. He noted, “The reason they have been living in generations of subsistence is that many of them have the attitude that it’s just the way it is, the way it’s always been and they can’t do anything about it. Wealth and success is for somebody else.” They even wonder if prosperity might be wicked because it might lead them to be proud. Perhaps God wants them to be poor, even if their families suffer for it.
Co-founder Steve Gibson said that the academy teaches enterprise, which is not just about business, but also about being willing to practice the principles of change and progress. “You say, God doesn’t intend for me to live like this. He wants me to have an abundant life. He wants me to progress, to work out my spiritual and temporal salvation. He wants me, he allows me, he enables me to control my own destiny by taking action rather than to be acted upon.” He noted, “The world was created by God organizing the elements. Prosperity is also created by organizing the potential in those suffering from poverty.”
We interviewed several former academy students and what they consistently said was before the academy, they wanted to live with more abundance, but they had no idea what to do. They didn’t even know where to start. Students at The Academy for Creating Enterprise hear business success stories from earlier ACE graduates and other successful entrepreneurs. What grows in them is the idea of possibility.
They also learn what’s called the “Rules of Thumb” for success. These rules include ideas like “Sell what the market will buy,” “Start small, think big.” “Inspect more, assume less.” The students are also taught that after they have had the benefit of this education, their job is to go forth and mentor others. Mentoring is such an important idea for Steve and Bette Gibson that their license plate says, “Mentor” on it. Twenty-seven academy alumni groups have been started across the Philippines whose role is to encourage academy graduates to in turn mentor others. They tell the graduates, “You only really learn something when you teach it to someone else.” “As you serve one another, it’s impossible not to be happy.”
With the academy, the staff is seeking to fulfil, among other things, the words of Brigham Young. “(Jesus) requires, absolutely requires, of us to take these people who have named his name through baptism, and teach them how to live, and how to become healthy, wealthy, and wise. This is our duty.” 10th Anniversary—A Decade of Hope One week prior to the Cebu City temple dedication, a 10th anniversary conference and gala was held for all of the academy graduates. Straight off the plane and still jet-lagged, we saw first hand the impact of the academy on so many lives and the teaching about how to start a business that was so gospel-centered.
Where else, but among returned missionaries, could such entrepreneurial discussions take place? We happened in on one break-out session where the instructor was talking about how to treat your customers, He said, “Business principles and gospel principles are the same. Charity never faileth.” Another advised, “Be careful of the first thing you read in the morning. If I read my scriptures first thing in the morning, ideas come better all day long.” Still another, “Don’t abandon something that has promise.”
A singer treated to the group to “There can be miracles when you believe.” Steve and Bette Gibson’s idea to open up the potential and possibilities of returned missionaries through encouraging them to start businesses in this land of no jobs has transformed the lives of so many—including in a way they never anticipated.
Sixty-two alumni have been married in the Manila temple after meeting at an academy class, all of them better able to live beyond poverty because they have been taught. The night of the gala each couple who was present brought a red rose to the Gibsons as a thank you. It made them cry.
As for Elder David E. LeSueur, who is passionate about these issues, he believes that returned Filipino missionaries will have less to be anxious about because of The Academy for Creating Enterprise. Coming next Monday: We’ll meet an academy graduate whose life was completely changed by what he learned there.