PhilDev gets prestigious USAID grant

By: 11 years ago

PhilDev is holding its annual fundraising event with a live performance by Tony Award winner Lea Salonga in San Francisco at Nourse Theater at CityArts on Saturday, October 5th at 8 p.m. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

SAN FRANCISCO—The Philippine Development Foundation (PhilDev) has received a large multi-year grant from the United States Agency International Development (USAID).

PhilDev will use the monies to bring entrepreneurship training and culture into the growing engineering and science programs in the Philippine higher education system through a program called IDEA (Innovative Development through Entrepreneurship Acceleration).

The goal is to produce long-term, sustainable economic growth in the Philippines through the creation of innovative businesses.

A three-year entrepreneurship program has been created to train Filipino engineers and scientists in business planning, market identification, product marketing, business incubation and working with venture capital.

This injection of money will help bring US entrepreneurs, executives, venture capitalists and professors to the Philippines to participate in an annual symposium on the development of entrepreneurial activity in the Philippines, in addition to entrepreneur workshops, career counseling and mentoring.

“This generous grant will further aid PhilDev in accomplishing its mission of growing a globally competitive Philippine economy,” says Chairman Dado Banatao.

“We believe that education and training are key to any sustainable economic growth and therefore our organization commits itself to developing programs and supporting partnership initiatives in science and technology education, innovation, and entrepreneurship.”