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Do you know the way to NUVALI? Past Metro Manila’s concrete jungle, follow the well-paved roads that will take you to Sta. Rosa and Calamba, Laguna, the center of the thriving region south of Makati and bask in the bracing breeze and the pristine greenery. Ayala Land’s NUVALI, which spans 1,750 hectares, is an inspiring model of a green, sustainable eco-community. Built on the triple pillars of environmental, economic, and social sustainability, community development remains a primary objective of a NUVALI to achieve this balance.
 The creating of a livelihood programs was developed together with the communities involved in the area. Dubbed as Alay sa Komunidad, the program encourages members of the community to participate in the development and operations of the livelihood program. As of now, there business lines, which resulted from brainstorming with the members: food service, charcoal briquettes, and woven paper baskets. Of the three, the women are most active in the woven paper project. Here, the community members don’t just weave baskets, they also weave dreams of a bright tomorrow.
“These people have no fixed source of income, but now, they are able to convert trash to cash and come up with export-quality products,” says Chit Juan of Echo) Environment and Community Hope Organization) Store.
But that’s getting ahead of our beautiful story. It all started when Ayala Land marketing officer Rivka Nagtalon went to the EchoStore, Chit was giving a talk on “Going Green” at the Ayala Training Institute on simple eco-conscious efforts and tips at home and at the workplace. “My two partners Jeannie Javelosa and Reena Francisco and I fly to different places all over the country to give talks to people who are otherwise not exposed to the global trends,” Chit shares. It was around this time that the two finally met through another friend, and spent an afternoon at the store poring over eco-friendly products made by various communities around the country. It was two heads coming together to explore opportunities for the partners in NUVALI, Laguna. It would be a long, circuitous path that would bring Rivka, Chit, and another lady together to develop the woven paper basket program in NUVALI. In one of her provincial sorties, Chit met Nida Cabrera, the dynamic barangay captain of Barangay Luz in Cebu City. “ Nida has shown us how wee can make a pile of cash from tons of trash. Every day, Nida and together with Barangay Luz would collect some three to five tons of garbage from the establishments at Ayala Center Cebu,” Chit relates. She sorts out and segregates the clean paper. The food wastes are made into compost and then sold to Shangri-La Mactan.
 You can say that in Metro Cebu, nothing goes to waste. Chit shares an interesting side story: “At a wake or funeral, you won’t see any litter like Zesto Tetrapacks or doy packs because Nida’s people pick them up and make them into lunch and picnic bags, grocery bags and a lot of other handmade beauties, they have this “mopping-up” operation. They also collect the used chopsticks from the Japanese restaurants and make them into placemats.”
It would be these products displayed at EchoStore that would spark the inspiration for NUVALI’s basket weaving project as another key component of its over-all community development program. Members of the community were then invited to explore the eco-friendly products at the store. Chit showed them the eco-chic baskets made of recycled newspaper, old magazines and phonebooks, proudly done by the Correctional Institute of women, the Philippine Christian Foundation, and Smokey Mountain.
It was agreed that the woven paper products would be the most suitable as a livelihood project. Barangay Captain Nida Cabrera was invited to NUVALI to conduct a series of training of the participating communities. And, the rest is a wonderfully woven story.
Why basket weaving? The reason is that weaving is a simple handicraft and does not require any equipment, like a sewing machine, for instance. All it needs is an enterprising spirit. Limited only by their creativity and imagination, the community members, mostly housewives, have come up with woven beauties such as gift baskets, tray, etc. which sell really well at the Fair Trade Shops that have a specialty niche market in the US.
This month, the NUVALI basket products were actively displayed at the Ayala Sustainability Summit at the Manila Peninsula. It was at this event that NUVALI received another invitation o exhibit at the Asian Trade Fair on Corporate Social Responsibility at the Crowne Plaza last November 19-20. NUVALI proudly displayed the communities’ basket products fashioned out of the old Globe Telecom phone directories donated by the telecommunications firm in support of the project. Another invitation has been received to exhibit at the Children’s Hour benefit gathering in December.
 Skills training is only one part of the equation in creating s viable business. Learning how to craft the product needs to be supplemented with an appreciation for the business model of a cooperative. NUVALI also utilizes partnerships to provide training on back end operations of the cooperative such as leadership basic financial management, basic marketing, and product selling. Organizational such as the Ateneo School of Government, and volunteers from the De La Salle Graduate School of Business have participated in the community development program of NUVALI.
Through its Alay sa Komunidad program, NUVALI hopes to establish a sustainable social program for and within its partners in the local community. The breadth of the program aims to reach a broader bracket from the community. Together with the community, the NUVALI team studied the needs and the most suitable programs to reach the children, youth, housewives, men, and retires. The challenge was how to empower the community, and the task was to ensure it involved various members of the community.
Alay Sa Komunidad has a school program reaching Grade 1 pupils, youth formation activities for teens, livelihood opportunities for the men and women, and basic health programs for retirees. The livelihood business in only one part of a more holistic and sustainable community development program that ties in economic and social sustainability principles.
True to its triple sustainability platform, all programs are integrated with the environmental education and awareness efforts of NUVALI.
Alay sa Komunidad’s livelihood programs zero in on proper waste segregation, upcycling of old materials for new uses such as the woven recycled paper products, encouraging the use of alternative charcoal brickets produced by the community from organic materials. At NUVALI, an ecologically, socially, and economical sustainable lifestyle is a dream come true. And it continues to weave more eco-friendly stories.
To know more about NUVALI and its community programs and products, visit www.nuvalievoliving.com., or e-mail ask@nuvalievoliving.com. Or drop by the weekend bazaar at NUVALI this December where sample of the products will be displayed..
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