A little goes a long way

Entrepreneur Magazine, March 2012

An article by Lolita Villa of Entrepreneur Magazine Philippines about Sinag Printing winning the Natasa Prize 2011 in Vienna, Austria.

Not all CSR programs cost an arm and a leg. Take it from this small printng press in Laguna.

A small business south of Manila owned by a young couple recently proved that you can undertake a CSR (Corporate Social Resposibility) program for under P50,000 – and even win an international award in the process.

                In 2007, Ruel Landicho, 34, and his wife Raia Dela Peña-Landicho, 32, started Sinag Publishing and Printing Services, a Calamba, Laguna – based printing company that specializes in school yearbooks and marketing collaterals.

                Sinag is actually an offshoot of Tambuli Publishing, started by Raia’s father and known for printing community newspapers since the 1970s. Though growing and successful, Sinag is still a small outfit run by less than 15 people, using an old Heidelberg offset press manufactured a hundred years ago.

                Which is why the unassuming Landichos, who started Sinag on a whim, were surprised when the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers or WAN-IFRA, awarded them the first Natasa Prize for Printing Plants in the 2011 World Young Reader Awards for running a series of successful programs that benefited young journalists in the greater Calabarzon (Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal and Quezon provinces) area.

How did they do it?

Aiming to “foster a love for writing and journalism in the youth of our province”, the Landichos launched their first ever Sinag Journalism Training (SJT) seminar at Calamba’s Central 1 Elementary School in October 2008.

                Raia, a Comparative Literature Major at the University of the Philippines –Diliman, tapped her former schoolmates as speakers for the event. The couple also approached the local Department of Education office to have them sponsor the venue and open the event to both public and private institutions. Local government officials responded to their solicitations by providing food and announcement banners for the event. The result: about 1,000 young students attended the seminar.

                Since then, the couple has organized two more seminars, both of them sponsored and offered to the students for free.

At what cost?

The Landichos spent less than P30,000.00 for all three seminars by tapping the resources of like-minded organizations. Raia, a great fan of social networking sites, admits that Sinag does not even have its own website (although they are currently working on one), but uses Facebook, Multiply, Sulit, Blogspot and other free sites to promote the business and the seminars.

                These sites were how Wan-Ifra executive director Dr. Aralynn McMane discovered them. McMane saw Sinag as the one that embodied the spirit of the Natasa Award the best. She contacted the Landichos, who then flew to Vienna, Austria to attend the 63^rd World Newspaper Congress in October last year, to receive the recognition.

                The Landichos get emotional when asked about this achievemnt – they have never dreamed that their experimental attempts at business and CSR would let them reap an international recognition. Raia says: “We are just a small company. But this has not deterred us from dreaming to do great things for the Community.”

What is the Natasa Prize?

The Natasa Prize for Printing Plants category of the World Young reader Awards goes to a newspaper printing plant “that has an effective educational programme to teach the young about newspaper journalism and about the importance and fragility of a free press,” according to the WAN-IFRA website (www.wan-ifra.org)

                The prize was named after the late Nataza Vuckovic Lesendric who, in partnership with WAN-IFRA and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco), founded and ran a distribution system and then a printing plant for the independent press of Siberia under the repressive regime of longtime president Slobodan Milosevic.