Women driving sustainability learn to sustain themselves

COLLECTIVE HAND “Sustainability for Founders,” now among the highest- ranked modules in the Asian Institute of Management’s Dado Banatao Incubator program, allows tireless social and environmental advocates to begin taking care of themselves, too. —CONTRIBUTED PHOTO

The people building mission-driven organizations in the Philippines rarely do it for the money. Ironically, the Filipinos attempting to drive social and environmental change—demonstrating extraordinary care for others—are the ones that save the least care and resources for themselves.

The women-led, nonprofit impact organization Sustina was founded on that premise. Sustina’s mission is to democratize sustainability intelligence, to publish insights and stories, and to help Filipinos access resources and frameworks they otherwise wouldn’t have.

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In a world where climate finance is growing globally, we aim to close the gap so that the Philippines—the most at-risk country in the world in terms of climate disasters—can receive those resources.

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But it starts at home. A sustainable country requires people who can take care of themselves.

As one of Sustina’s founders, I’ll never forget the feedback we got after our first sustainability workshop, from two participants who have been working tirelessly for 20 years in the impact space. They said they finally knew what it felt like to have their hand held through the work.

For two days, they felt something they did not feel enough of in their sector: a safe space to learn, to ask questions, to not already have the answers.

“Ito pala ’yung feeling maging baby girl,” they laughed. A half-joke, but it inspired us to start engineering a safe and inclusive atmosphere more purposefully, to create something that seemed to be missing.

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Helping each other

What was missing is not unique to those participants, we soon realized. Too many Filipinos working in environmental and social impact are burning out. We heard too many stories about founders giving themselves 20-hour workdays, hurting their health, and running out of personal finances for the sake of paying staff.

It confirms what many already know: Filipinos have the biggest hearts. But the impact sector cannot fund itself on heart alone.

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This is the problem that our workshop, “Sustainability for Founders,” aims to address. Now among the highest-ranked modules in the Asian Institute of Management’s Dado Banatao Incubator program, the module acknowledges that sustainability, especially in the Philippines, is not just an organizational challenge. It is a personal one.

In this workshop, the magic is in watching founders help each other. The room comes alive. In supporting each other, they help themselves: acknowledging how much they take on, allowing themselves to discover ways to relieve those pressures. They allow themselves to have help, grace, and most importantly, limitations.

Our long-term vision for Sustina was always to see the Philippines embrace and remember its culture of sustainability—one that will, in turn, take care of all Filipinos.

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What our workshops and a network of over 100 founders have taught us is that we cannot change the culture if it’s built on the backs of people who feel like they aren’t allowed to take care of themselves.