MANILA, PHILIPPINES — Sari-sari stores are the lifeblood of Pinoy communities – providing daily essentials, fostering social connections, and enabling a source of livelihood for many generations of Filipino families. There are over a million sari-sari stores in the Philippines, an integral part of the country’s Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), and Unilever recognizes their invaluable contribution to its business and the nation’s economy.
Unilever’s Kabisig Summit are online and in-person tailored training sessions created for sari-sari store operators to help improve business management skills, increase sales, protect their business, and enhance their livelihoods. Its main areas of intervention are skills training, business resilience, and access to technology, helping sari-sari store owners embrace digitalization and improving key processes.
Unilever Philippines Chairman and CEO Fredy Ong takes pride in this social investment because of his own entrepreneurial start with his family’s humble store in a public market, saying “At Unilever, we believe empowering MSMEs is an equally important segment in our sustainability agenda. The Kabisig Summit is important and personal to me, not only because I concurrently head our sales function, but because I am testament to how a small business can change people’s lives for the better. The success of sari-sari stores is also the Filipino people’s success.”
The Kabisig Summit program is borne from a customer-first mindset: listening to sari-sari stores and creating a program that caters to their needs while being considerate of their personal and operating context. This is a Unilever core value: Malasakit.
Sari-sari stores allow their owners to have a source of income while remaining in their homes to manage domestic responsibilities, including childcare. To encourage attendance with minimal disruption to their sari-sari store operations or domestic routines, these Kabisig Summit sessions were initially held in the vicinity of partner stores before evolving to its hybrid format to include online sessions.
Kabisig Summit’s success
Key to the success of the Kabisig program is its accessibility and the peer-to-peer mentorship built from a community that cares about the growth of its members. For Kabisig Summit attendees, it’s not only enriching but also inspiring to learn from another business owner on how they were able to grow their business and improve the lives of their family. Since the Kabisig Summit’s launch in 2016, the program has reached hundreds of thousands of lives, positively impacting sari-sari store owners, their families and communities.
Based on a 2021 commissioned study on the Kabisig Summit program, 91% of attendees are women, empowering more Filipinas to contribute to their household income while at home. Of the Kabisig Summit attendees surveyed, 76% reported increased earnings and savings and 79% reported business growth, turning around the story of how sari-sari stores barely grow and are vulnerable to closures.
Unilever’s new era of Corporate Sustainability
Leadership Unilever’s refreshed sustainability agenda was launched in 2024 in a bid to define the new era of its corporate sustainability leadership. As the company looks to the future, it’s now about accelerating delivery by making sustainability progress integral to business performance. Unilever is determined to deliver against its plan – organized into four focus areas of climate, nature, plastics and livelihoods. Unilever Philippines’ Kabisig Summit forms part of the company’s global sustainability goal to help 2.5 million SMEs in its global retail value chain grow their business.
For more information, visit this website.
