The vision of people coming together to build something or implement a design that has social relevance is the way of life chosen by Illac Diaz. This entrepreneur is engaged in social enterprise, which is and philanthropic capital can both invest on, which will result in return of investment for business and providing for the needs of people.
The cycle will be continuous, with money from business going back and forth and more and more people being helped in the process. Diaz is also engaged in designing labor-saving technologies that can also be readily built and used by people who need them.[1]
Illac Diaz was born in Manila of Filipino-Italian parentage and earned a degree in Management Economics at Ateneo. He took his Masters at the Asian Institute of Management with the thesis: “Shanties to Jobs: Creating a Migrant Center in Manila”, and also studied urban planning and public administration at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard respectively.[2]
Diaz’s educational background might qualify him for a prominent corporate position, but he elected a life geared more to service, and took on the challenge of hands-on social development through entrepreneurship.[3] He is a pioneer in combining business acumen, social concern and continuing innovation. Diaz transforms small ideas for socially conscious businesses into sustainable expanded models for addressing the immediate problems of the marginalized groups of society.[4]
His landmark Pier One Seafarer’s Dormitory project provides safe and affordable transient housing and services for thousands of Filipino seafarers and their families within Manila, while the heads of family waited for job placements or the processing of their papers, instead of staying in unsafe living spaces in squatter areas. Diaz’s design of a 40-bed dormitory in 2000, which also offered temporary work and job search assistance, grew into a 1,500 bed concern with branches in Intramuros, Recto and Ermita, that has proven to be sustainable, with profits being invested back into the business. The winning CentroMigrante project, which evolved from the Pier One prototype, will offer tenants a period of free tenancy in exchange for construction of the units from prefabricated parts. The system enabled the reduction of the average waiting time for jobs from seven to three months.[5]
The MyShelter Foundation project originated from a solution to the lack of classrooms and housing in Negros Occidental. Diaz discovered the feasibility of using adobe as building material as was done during the Spanish era, and came up with the Earthbag Construction System, which he studied thoroughly in India and the U.S., before applying it to the Philippines. The system used local soil and labor which reduced building costs and allowed the generation of savings for other expenses.[6]
Diaz has also developed a design for the efficient peeling of peanuts which uses a simple cast cement sheller built like a large peppermill and made from fiberglass molds, that results in a much greater output than when the process is done manually. His group is likewise working on other simple, easily replicated cement agricultural machines that will increase crop yield.[7] His Design Against the Elements project is an initiative to make sustainable design a working standard in building future homes and communities throughout the world. It is a global competition that focuses on the need to consider the environment and climate change in designing structures and where architects will need to come up with a design for a green and disaster-resilient town in the Philippines that would be used as a prototype for the world.[8]
Diaz is a generalist in that he sees the winning link between entrepreneurship, design and social development. His acceptance of financial struggle as inevitable when one engages in socially responsible endeavors is laudable.[9] The Philippines needs more of his kind.
[1] “Illac Diaz – Social Entrepreneur; Executive Director of MyShelter Foundation; Founder of Pier One
Seafarer Center”, Greater Good Philippines, 7 April 2010, <http://greatergood.i.ph/blogs/greatergood/2010/04/07/illac-diaz-social-entrepreneur-executive-director-of-myshelter-foundation-founder-of-pier-one-seafarer-center/> [accessed 2 June 2011]
[2] “Illac Diaz”, WikiPilipinas, 13 February 2010, http://en.wikipilipinas.org/index.php?title=Illac_Diaz
[accessed 2 June 2011]
[3] “Illac Diaz – Social Entrepreneur…”
[4] Artessa Saldivar-Sali, “Social Entrepreneur Illac Diaz: It’s Possible to Change the World”, TruthForce,
11 June 2006, Philippine Star, <http://www.truthforce.info/?q=node/view/1739> [accessed 2 June 2011]
[5] ibid
[6] ibid
[7] ibid
[8] “Illac Diaz – Social Entrepreneur…”
[9] Artessa Saldivar-Sali
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