EthniCoco
By Kamille Mae Buron
The Founder
Hello! My name is Kamille Mae Buron and I’m a proud Agusanon helping my community through the social enterprise I founded, together with my friends, known as EthniCoco.
Agusan del Sur is known as home to IPs and locals with ethnic ancestries in the country. Most of them face development challenges, including those due to conflict, exploitation of resources, lack of education, and inadequate financial opportunities. When I was still a university student, I visited a small isolated barrio where marginalized IPs and locals live. The children usually leave the school early to help their parents earn a few pesos for a can of sardines which serves as their meal for the day. As I get to know more about their situation, I dreamed of helping them with what I love which is science and innovation.
As an engineering graduate and social entrepreneur, I have found my purpose to initiate youth-led changes that address pressing societal problems, especially poverty, sustainability and environmental risks. This north star is embodied in our goal as a team to transcend our locals’ capability in maximizing the environmental resources and wastes.
What is your change story?
Coming from the awarded research study I’ve presented in Malaysia, my friends and I decided to give it a shot at commercialization by making it an entry in a national hackathon last November 2019. It became part of the top three entries and after that we found ourselves continuing what we’ve started in that hackathon.
In my EthniCoco team right now, we’re in our early 20s and 30s. What we lack in experience, we make up for our passion, energy, and knowledge we gained as fresh graduates. The team’s composed of people that are in the field of agriculture, land surveying, and product branding. All are mindful of sustainability and environmental issues. With our diversified team, we have to maximize our skills properly by assessing what we can and must do.
Caraga is known for its vast areas inhabited by coconut trees yet most of the coconut farmers only utilize them for commonly made products such as copra, charcoal, and geonets. This is why the team realized its potential to influence and create an impact in innovating the wastes in the coconut industry. In its product development, the team is not only helping the coconut farmers but also the locals who are employed in creating handmade salad bowls, plant pots, coco coir paper, coco cutleries and other items. Through this, EthniCoco offers cheap, innovative, handmade, eco-friendly products to everyone while enabling opportunities to local communities.
What is systems change?
Systems change for me is a progressive take of how we help the community as a whole. Knowing that its main focus is to answer the root causes of challenges and pain points rather than the superficial repercussions, I firmly see it as the most efficient way of addressing social problems. In my personal experience, EthniCoco team uses it to understand and evaluate the problems of our constituents and the situation of our target community. With it, we narrowed down the path of principles and goals we made in achieving the change we seek.
What is your systems action plan
During the start of COVID-19, we canceled our progress and operations. We continued and pivoted a few months after. As of today, we’re bootstrapping to continue our progress. All of our financial capital came from our savings and salaries. We didn’t mind knowing that we’re able to gradually create systems change in the community. This covers how we enable the locals by hiring them, teaching them skills, and offering capacity-building ( such as leadership training) seminars to their children.
Our course of action is to continue our progress by scaling up our production as well as our operations by grants and our profits. Moreover, we continuously hold meetings and site visits to be able to point out necessary adjustments needed for the arrangements we had with our target community. Lastly, the team is working on creating updated market research to balance out necessary fixings in our marketing and branding. We highly prioritize the value of the feedback system to keep up with our consumer trends.
What is your greatest takeaway from HiFi Future Shapers Program?
In my HiFi Future Shapers Program journey, I grasped many things that made me gain confidence in myself in this arduous path I chose as a changemaker. Before the program, I was just a university student aspiring to be a social entrepreneur, trying to take on the massive world of entrepreneurship and social innovation. Some doubts lurked inside the 20-year-old me that held me back for quite some time. The program covered explorations that were essential to various aspects you have to face a changemaker. It also allows you to be immersed in a warm community filled with passionate and supportive mentors and fellow social entrepreneurs.
The lessons I value in this journey would be how it taught me how to be effective in acting to the core values that we desire to be in the world we live in and how if something has been done in the same way for many years already, then it means it’s time for a change. Ultimately, the value of how strong we are when we collectively hone each other in making the difference we aspire.
How might we support the organization?
EthniCoco team aspires to see local communities prosper from the pits of poverty, marginalization, and see the conservation of our environment. With your help, we can further our progress in this journey we partake. Such help would probably be;
1.) Human Resources: Yes, you heard it right! Our team is looking for volunteers to cater to our operations since most of the core team are part-timers. We’re also currently building our website. Individuals looking for a project to master their skills in web designing are more than welcome too! It would be a suitable platform for you to try things out and at the same time help us.
2.) Financial Resources: Refer and send us links to the latest grants and seed funding programs! We highly need it to scale up our production.
3.) Social Media: Join us in our sustainability journey via following our social media pages @ethnicoco and contact us via ethnicoco@gmail.com for any questions and possible partnerships!
4.) Talks & Seminars: As a pioneering startup from the Caraga region, our team also took the initiative to create CocoBuhayan Talks, an online usapan to discuss problems that aspiring startups, changemakers, and social entrepreneurs face especially in our province. To motivate and inspire others, be our resource speaker and share with us your expertise!
Thank you for reading this and taking interest in EthniCoco!
