The shortage of entrepreneurial youth

Outside The Box
John Mangun

One of the most disturbing trends that I see in the local business scene is the lack of creative entrepreneurship among our youth.

Of course, there are numerous examples that we can use to demonstrate the opposite. Almost every week in one of the newspapers' Sunday magazines is a feature about this under-30 or those fresh graduates that have opened a new business. Their efforts are commendable. However, I find it distressing that, with at least a couple of million of people in the under-30 age group with access to the financial means to start a creative business, the few that accomplish this feat are the great exceptions to the rule.

Every nation depends on the vibrancy, literary, commercial, scientific and social dynamism of its youth to make substantial national progress for the future. We do not seem to have the kind of personal fervor and zeal as in generations past.

Perhaps it would be easy to dismiss my concerns as the ramblings of a late middle-aged man decrying the lost youth of 2006, as he looses and grow farther from his own youth. But, come on, I am just as big a fan of Parokya ni Edgar, Cueshé and Rivermaya as my teenage sons. I would just prefer to see more teenagers working to buy their iPods and Nokias than expect these toys to fall as manna from parental heaven.

So often, we hear negative things about the Filipino and the culture. Crab mentality and gaya-gaya mentality and all the other negatives that we seem too often pronounced as an ingrained part of Filipino society, which hinders and hampers our nation. And by assuming that these are cultural traits, how could we expect our youth to strive for excellence and attempt new endeavors? By what example and by whose teaching have we come to so often generally believe that the Filipino is only capable of "winning" by beating another man in a boxing ring or on a billiard table? Or that the only productive nation building that we can do is far away on some other shore?

I see the Filipinos of my generation and older who struggled and crawled out of the economic devastation of World War II as models to be emulated. So many started with nothing and built a nation of merit and a future for themselves. Has it been so long ago, that the nation, and more particularly the young, has forgotten that the Philippines was laid bare and broken after World War II? Have we forgotten that the Philippines rose from the ashes by the Filipinos' own toil and without assistance, unlike the former foes Japan and Germany ?

My wife's ninong, nearly 100 now, walked almost all the way from Ilocos to Manila after the war to sweep floors at Meralco. When he finally retired, he was the manager of a mechanics maintenance division. He did it on his own.

The men and women who built this country in the last 60 years certainly expected nothing from government. Of course, they worked the system and some bent and broke the rules to gain wealth. However, an independent Philippines was created from dust, economically shackled by oppressive USA-forced laws and the turmoil of that fresh independence.

Read Dr. Jose Rizal's El Filibusterismo and the story of the UST students Isagani, Makaraig and Sandoval. They want to learn Spanish to broaden their intelligence, and they fight through the system all the while knowing their efforts might probably come to nothing. They persevered with nothing less than the same entrepreneurial spirit it takes to create a business.

I know the analogy may seem far-fetched to some. However, if you have started your own business, you know exactly what I mean. No man or woman who began an enterprise behaved like a crying baby waiting to be breast-fed. I speak to student groups quite often and am dismayed when challenged to excel, so often their excuses start with, "But the government does not. . . ." What has changed in the last few decades that a generation or two has the idea that they must wait for the government, of all improbable institutions, to provide the resources, infrastructure, or whatever, for them to have the opportunity to succeed?

When 30 percent of our high-school graduates list first as their life's ambition to be able to work abroad, something is terribly wrong. And when they eventually leave, with the parting words that they will return when the government "improves," the Philippines is headed toward sure disaster.

Twenty years ago, Thais and Malaysians did not leave their home country. They stayed and built their nation. Forty years ago, Taiwanese graduates did not go abroad except for education and now we provide the manual labor for their economy.

The fault for this spineless attitude lies not with the government or the younger generations. I witnessed the same deterioration of determination and intestinal fortitude in my own birth nation. The pattern was somewhat the same as here in the Philippines , but here the condition is more rapid. I will tell you this: traditional values of social and ethical right and wrong fell first followed by a whimpering expectation of government "help" and then the final collapse of a proper personal work ethic.

The beginning of the decline of a nation starts with the loss of faith and belief in that nation. Pride in the past rather than satisfaction with the present, is more important to build the strength necessary to meet the future.

Whom can our young people look to for words and deeds that give optimism and enthusiasm for the Philippines ? Our political leaders? Our business leaders? Their own parents?

Comments to mangun@email.com.

http://www.businessmirror.com.ph/2006/0216/16%20oped%20outside.php