Entrepreneurship

This story was taken from www.inq7.net
http://news.inq7.net/opinion/index.php?index=2&story_id=71579

Entrepreneurship
First posted 00:45am (Mla time) April 04, 2006
By Inquirer

IT'S that time of the year again when thousands of students graduate from colleges and universities and face the big, wide world outside. Sadly, these bright-eyed new graduates face a not very encouraging future, given the state our economy is in. A great majority of them will be unemployed for a long time and will remain a burden to their families and to the state, unless they can do something now to keep themselves busy and productive.

Neither the government nor the private sector can offer the estimated 436,000 new graduates many jobs. Of the workforce totaling 35.2 million, 2.8 million are unemployed and 6.9 million are underemployed. Most of the graduates will join the ranks of the unemployed. Government offices are fully staffed, and the only positions that will be open are those that will be vacated by death, terminal sickness or dismissal. The private sector is not offering many employment opportunities, either, and those open require people who have special skills and some experience. Most of the jobs open to the new graduates will go to the highly talented and the highly skilled.

One option for the new graduates is to seek employment abroad. Right now there are many openings for nurses in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. Some graduates of medical schools will have to take a nursing course to be eligible for these nurses' positions abroad. Many education graduates will seek employment as governesses or domestic helpers abroad, a sad waste of training and education as well as manpower that is sorely needed in our schools.

Graduates who have certain technical and vocational skills enjoy an advantage over those who have completed white-collar courses such as law, commerce or mass communication. These technical and vocational school graduates can easily be employed in the Middle East and other parts of the world where there is a big demand for skilled labor.

What then are the rest of the new college graduates to do? One option is to become entrepreneurs and start small businesses. But this will require some capital and some entrepreneurial and technical expertise. These graduates can enroll in some courses such as those that used to be offered by the Livelihood Resource Center and learn entrepreneurial skills. Then they can use their savings, or borrow money from relatives, friends or banks and set up small enterprises. Or groups of graduates can pool their savings to form partnerships.

Running small enterprises may not seem so glamorous as going to 9-to-5 jobs dressed in long-sleeved shirts and neckties or barong Tagalog, but they offer a lot of possibilities for long-term advancement. But it will take a lot of hard work, perseverance and determination for these small businesses to grow. The rewards, however, may be surprising for some.

Spoofs Ltd. Inc. is a good example of an enterprise that started small, expanded over the years, and is now branching out to Alabang, Pampanga and Baguio. It was set up by Carlo Anthony Dobles and his friends at the Ateneo de Manila University with a borrowed capital of P18,000. First, they spoofed the Polo shirt into a Bolo design featuring a bolo-wielding farmer riding on a carabao. United Couples of Banatan (a spoof of United Colors of Benetton) followed.

A similar enterprise is Islands Souvenirs, which was founded by Jay Aldeguer in 1999. It began showcasing the best of the Philippine islands and has moved on to producing souvenirs from various tourist destinations.

And would you believe that the multimillion-peso National Bookstore chain started as a stall on Escolta Street in the late 1940s on a total capital of only P211 scraped up by Jose and Socorro Ramos? The story of Socorro Ramos is so inspiring that she has been called a "National Treasure.'' Last year she won the prestigious Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Award.

Another enterprise that started as a small backyard business is Splash Corp. which was set up with a start-up capital of only P12,000 by Dr. Rolando Hortaleza and his wife Rosalinda. Today it is a multimillion-peso business selling mega brands such as Extraderm, Skin White and Biolink.

All these examples show that small business may be the way to go for new graduates. It's time graduates stopped thinking only of regular office jobs as the only possible way of making a living. They should start thinking of going into business for themselves. That way they will get themselves immediately employed and occupied, feeding their families and helping in the economic development of the country.

 

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