Following the second run of the Citi Microentrepreneurship Awards (CMA) mentoring program that took place last year in Luzon, UP ISSI began mentoring winners in the Visayas last week. The Visayas run of the said mentoring program will cover winners based in Iloilo province and Negros island, including 2016 national winner Honie Krizia Navor of Iloilo City.
CMA winners in Iloilo province were mentored last week and will be followed by their counterparts in Negros later this month.
CMA is an annual nationwide search for outstanding Filipino micro entrepreneurs funded by Citi Foundation, the philanthropic arm of multinational banking and financial services corporation Citigroup. Done in partnership with the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas and the Microfinance Council of the Philippines, Inc. (MCPI), a non-stock, non-profit development organization for microfinance institutions in the Philippines, the CMA was launched in 2002 as part of the celebrations of Citi’s 100th year in the Philippines.
In 2015, the CMA Country Team decided to add a mentoring component to the awards program, starting with the past winners in Luzon. Thus, between 2015 and 2016 MCPI engaged the services of UP ISSI to undertake the mentoring program for past winners of the CMA in Luzon.
This year, the program will expand to include CMA winners in the Visayas region for the first time.
The author is one of the mentors in this mentoring program of UP ISSI with Citi and MCPI.