Benilde Prize Design Thinking Bootcamp Butuan
500 years before the Philippines, there was the glorious ancient kingdom of Butuan. Does it have new stories to tell the world?
For our second to the last leg of our Bootcamp, we brought our design thinking workshop to Father Saturnino Urios University (FSUU) in Butuan City. Butuan is the commercial, industrial, and administrative center of Caraga region and a strategic trading hub in Northern Mindanao with major roads connecting it to other main cities on the island.
Flashback one-thousand years back — 500 years before the Spaniards set foot on what would be known as the Philippines — Butuan was already a known for its gold and advanced shipbuilding. The discovery of ancient Balanghai boats in 1976 confirms Butuan’s important part in South East Asian trading, which includes the Kingdom of Champa (Vietnam), and China’s Sung Dynasty. Indeed, Butuan was a regional trading hub on a global scale until the decline of the Sri Vijayan Empire in 1300AD.
Post-Spanish and American colonisation, Butuan became a chartered city in 1950, becoming known at the “Timber City of the South”. When the logging industry declined by the 80s, the city’s main income came from mostly small to medium businesses and some investors.
Knowing this very unique cultural heritage of Butuan, we decided to tweak our usual design challenge which had always been about disaster resilience — to one of economic resilience, encouraged by the recent focus on tourism programs in the Philippines.
The design thinking workshop brought out questions of cultural identity — “yes we had a glorious past but what is a Butuanon nowadays?” We believe this is an important question to ask if we are to rediscover and reconnect with our past.
Congratulations to Team BalangJeep, which aims to bring Butuanon culture to the man on the street. They bested 5 other teams from different schools with their innovative and human-centered idea. The ball is now in the hands of those who have the opportunity to tell a new story about their past, one that speaks about their future hopes and dreams.
Benilde Prize Bootcamp is the 8th leg of our design thinking workshops held in regional centers of the Philippines. It culminates in a Call for Ideas where we provide 500,000 in seed funding, mentorship and incubation to the winning idea. Learn more at benildeprize.com.
