Illac Diaz – Social Entrepreneur; Executive Director of MyShelter Foundation; Founder of Pier One Seafarer Center

*September 27, 2010 update: Design Against the Elements receives hundreds of entries 

Social Entrepreneur and executive director of MyShelter Foundation, Illac Diaz, chose a life of service over a more lucrative career.

His educational background and professional experience may seem fit for a high-profile corporate position, but instead, Illac took on the more challenging path of hands-on social development through entrepreneurship.

But it’s no surprise especially to the people who know him.  Since childhood, Illac has had an inclination towards building and construction.

“My way of living is really seeing things get built in front of me with my father designing it and people coming together to build,” he said.  This formative experience reflected on his current endeavors.

Besides MyShelter Foundation, Illac is also the founder of Pier One Seafarer Center which serves as temporary accommodations for sea men waiting for their next maritime pursuit.

And this year, he is taking on a much greater challenge with the help of various institutions and individuals.  Illac’s latest project, Design Against the Elements, is a revolutionary initiative to make sustainable design a norm in future homes and communities around the globe.

Read or listen to this interview and know more about Illac Diaz and his contributions to a better society.  All these and more here on Greater Good Philippines.  [widget:widget_Ab1gJ1279097163278]


Jay-R Patron: What do you do currently?

Illac Diaz:  My work is basically right now in social enterprise, in appropriate technology and, I would call it, alternative construction.  To be more definite, it’s really… social enterprise is about business that use profits to alleviate poverty, so it’s not a charity, not a cash burn.  It’s trying to look for something where the people in need and the people creating what is called philanthropic capital can invest in something where the people get what they need but at the same time use this kind of cycle of business to continue it to grow.  But instead of private stock holdings, or singular stock holdings, in a way the money keeps on going back and keeps on helping more and more people.  The second one is called appropriate technologies or inventing machines that do labor-saving devices but with a twist.  Instead of the patent being owned by a company, or it being able to be manufactured only in special facilities, it can be done specifically for a people in need with materials that they can access, with a design that they can replicate.  The last one, which is think is the largest one, is really looking for alternative ways of doing things.  The lack of housing… not only the lack of housing, but the fact that many people will also have to face the loss of housing, which is through climate change, must find some way that isn’t governed by one NGO or one government handing out houses.  What we’re trying to say really is can we create strong, durable, steady houses out of materials found in an indigenous way, or if not, using waste to be able to generate these houses?  Although we commonly believe that large organizations can solve the housing problem, in reality there is not enough money in any organization to meet the housing needs of the populace.  We like of great terms, “Housing for all”, “Homes for all”, but really in the world there is not enough charity capital and there is not enough handouts to be able to create this kind of thing.  In that sphere, where there is so many communities untouched by these funds, can they create a strong and sustainable house for them to live in, or a school or public facility, such that these kind of spaces can meet the growth needs of the community?  Education, libraries, maybe even community halls… instead of it being in traditional ways that are being destroyed constantly by typhoons, can they start building something more durable?  Maybe we’re too poor to afford cement, steel and glass.  Maybe we’d have to look for something indigenous to the tropical community, soil, bamboo, artificial corals, OET bottles, there’s just so many options that have been neglected.  

Jay-R Patron:  What essentially is Design Against the Elements?

Illac Diaz:  Design Against the Elements is really addressing the fact that in our infrastructure, there are more community homes or residences that are going to be damaged by the shifting climate.  When Manila felt the first manifestation of climate change in big way, which was Ondoy or Ketsana, hundreds of millions of dollars worth of property and hundreds of lives were lost.  But what we’re trying to say is, what if we lived in not in a linear problem, which is that Ondoy will happen once, therefore we’ll donate once, we’ll come together once?  But what if it was cyclic that Ondoy is a series of Ondoys by any other name that will be hitting not only the province but the city and how will the future, especially those who cannot afford, are vulnerable and least able to adapt, how will they be able to survive without having this cyclic destruction and reconstruction to deal with?  Already there is poverty, what more the additional burden of climate change?  In 2008, we began trying to investigate this.  How can we build better schools in rural areas?  Schools being the bomb shelter or the place of refuge for these communities.  If you know, schools are always a child’s walk away from any community, and also during times of calamities, it’s always just a run away to be able to go to these classrooms.  Being that cement, steel and glass are the hardest kind of walling or reinforcement, unfortunately that’s not the way that building classrooms has been looked at, which means that in the mass consumption there’s a set number of hollow blocks, set number of roofing sheets, when contractors want to win these large number of accounts… and we’re talking about the same suppliers… there must be a lot of cutting of corners.  How do we know this?  It’s because there are more classrooms being destroyed than are being built.  So this cycle of destruction and reconstruction is not only classrooms that are unusable but people inside these classrooms when they collapse.  So we opened this (DAtE) globally, working with the United Architects of the Philippines, Holcim Foundation, and we really reached out to architects around the world.  And in fact they came in today, with the help of the CamSur government, we’re building some of the largest bamboo schools.  The winner is Eleena Jamil, and Eleena Jamil’s design… because it’s a design-and-build… you win it, you get 10,000 dollars plus you get to build the classroom.  The second part, because of Ondoy, we wanted to build the next generation disaster-resilient… a rural village around the disa
ster-resilient school.  But what happened was when Ondoy struck Manila we thought that it would be better to start figuring out how to do this in-city.  Why in-city?  Because when disaster strikes, the usual reaction of the government is to get this group of people and to transfer them to some remote area or site.  We’re against it, not the fact against helping, but against the fact that we’re already a monster of urban sprawl.  You don’t want to just use new hectares of singular detached houses to solve these kinds of problems.  First of all you have to move them in-city, dense structures, higher structures.  When typhoon happens at least they’re not hit by typhoons.  If you build them multi-storey and in-city that means that the job consideration is still there.  Plus when you build denser, transport system can be organized.  The whole thing about sustainability is kept intact, but when you start urban sprawl, later on these places will have to deal with sewage, second they will be building second storey, third storey without any architectural guideline and plus the fact that there is no organization… disaster = build 3000 homes.  It’s just the wrong way to deal with this.  We believe that it’s time to move up.  It’s time to move closer to the city and the whole thing about building hollow block on hollow block houses without any kind of new innovation after all these years.  You’re talking of a design that has been there since 1960s.  We’re always building the same square house with metal roof.  It’s time to innovate.  We’re working with the leadership of Freddie Tinga of the city of Taguig, with the United Architects of the Philippines, we’re throwing a global competition that is basically saying, “Can we design a low income community, post-disaster, that can be safer but greener?”  Can you just stop the hollow block on hollow block because green is actually survival for us?  When these communities get isolated by floods, there could be alternative power to keep for the next two weeks.  You could see this also where once there was a lined piped in water, you would see a lot of these communities gather water from the roofs.  Why can’t we make that already a system?  How about these poor communities start to use plastic cups to plant mongo seeds to feed themselves because they could not have access all the way to hand outs?  The communities are already shifting but what we’re saying is can architecture add on to that?  How can we have green roofs that are cooler but can be food supply?  How can we have water that can be from the rain, rain collectors… cheapen the supply… maybe even recycle the water but at the same time during calamity be a source of clean water supply?  These are the cities we see in the future.  At the same time the waste is collected somehow and recycled somehow instead of when the water goes up the whole town becomes a cesspool of floating debris.  Plus, if there’s no sustainability, all of these people will have to go in and out of their houses to be able to buy electricity or energy, food and water.  So we really have to look for… when 80 percent of the city goes underwater we’re thinking how can we make them more resilient to survive two weeks of floods.  So that’s the competition.  How can we make it greener and disaster-resilient?  Why is this important to all of us?  Because if you don’t address it, all of us have to gather food, water and fuel for climate refugees every single year and we can’t do that.  There’s just can be an exhaustion pattern.  Why not spend this millions and millions of pesos of handouts in solid design improvements?  A design solution to what is essentially a design problem?

Jay-R Patron: Design Against the Elements is a global competition, who in particular can join?

Illac Diaz:  There are two categories.  One category is open.  All professional architects, studios, associations, the only requirement is that they have a licensed architect, so it can be a group of engineers, water sanitation, but one of them has to be an architect.  If you win, you get 10,000 dollars and you get to build the town, the first green and disaster-resilient town in the city, in the country and as a prototype for the world.  

Jay-R Patron:  Who are the sponsors for this project?

Illac Diaz:  The sponsors right now are the city of Taguig, United Architects of the Philippines, and there are Sony Bravia, who is doing the documentation and lending the equipment, and we have the UN White Helmets that are helping us spread this internationally.  We also have Six Degrees, who has been kind of enough to really put up a great website for us.  We have XOB, which does design considerations.  DigiScript Philippines, that has taken the winning designs of last year, so people can see that we take this all seriously.   We have Big Top Media Productions doing our AVP and of course, we have Brand Bureau Inc. helping us with our logo and poster designs, and of course, most importantly is that we have a great media partner in National Geographic.  They’re going to be our regional partners and event partners.  It’s something that is big and growing.  We have a lot of people coming in.  

Jay-R Patron:  It seems that most of your projects are veered towards housing.  Why this?

Illac Diaz: MyShelter is specifically on that, which is shelter.  My strength is really looking for alternative ways that groups of marginalized populations can find shelter but using what is available to them, either labor-wise or opportunity-wise or sustainable business-wise.  MyShelter focuses on shelter aspects.

Jay-R Patron:  Let’s take MyShelter for example.  How do you make it sustainable?  The sustainable side of it, how do you make it sustainable?

Illac Diaz:  We are a social enterprise and so with the Pier One Seafarer Center, this is a center where we charge a dollar a night or two dollars a night for staying in a non-aircon or aircon area, and of course there is a work-for-stay.  If they don’t have enough money, they can work in our bottling stations of ink stations.  The fact is that we house a lot of these people and we get most of our revenue from that area.  The next is we started off with grants with the Earth Schools, but now we’re contracted by these remote townships to be able to build schools in these remote areas.  We use local populants, local labor and so we charge for the building of these schools.  Everything does have a professional fee but the nice thing there is we don’t charge exorbitantly but at the same time, even though we charge for some income, we build with much less using local materials.

Jay-R Patron:  I have a here a few questions from a friend, Jovitt Trinidad of KalyeSpeak and OneTama.  His first question… what motivates you to keep doing what you do?

Illac Diaz:  I think the fundamental thing is being Filipino, you have an obligation and not just an option to do something.  The second is it really grew from what was available to me to do my obligation as Filipino and being a citizen of this country, benefiting from it education-wise, nutrition-wise, society-wise.  There must be a certain p
oint where what you get can also be matched with what you can give back.  And I have received a lot.  When I didn’t have money it was volunteerism.  When I had some money it was donation.  But later on I realized what the cash burn system is and what is giving the long-term solution through social enterprise.  So the main point was that I was trying to give at a certain point what I had.  It really grew from just a spirit of wanting to do something, to realizing that you can do a little bit of something, realizing that you can donate a bit of the wealth that you’re given.  And then the richest portion is not giving just money or not just giving sweat but giving revolutionary ideas was the ultimate way that somebody could be able to transform.  These solutions intrigued me and so there, I just grew in to the fact to be more confident and at the same time, I could see that I could help more and more people by revolutionizing the ideas that they can help themselves and that the Philippines can be transformed.  When I was young, I was inspired by great statesmen, by great speakers, by change makers, and I was always curious about the fact, what did I have to say in life that contributed a little bit more to the human situation around me, to the Philippine situation or maybe the world?  And so I just wanted to experience, and of course not only experience but to try to see if I could discover something to say that could have some kind of impact and I think that was the existence that I wanted.  Wouldn’t it be great if I spent my younger years, or a couple of years of my younger years to really find that voice whereby it would not just be a voice of awareness but really solidly coming up with this design considerations that could be pattern-breaking solutions?  I’m still looking for that but I’m very excited that I’m slowly finding my voice in the world.  It’s not my voice that’s important but now it’s going to be how to get other people’s voices out there, people who know that they can make a difference but really haven’t taken that step where they really see that they can do something great.

Jay-R Patron: Another question, what do you say to well-meaning friends and family who would advise you to go to choose other more profitable occupations?

Illac Diaz:  The point there is what I’m doing really has a lifestyle decision.  I mean you’ve ridden around in my old Safari, but hey, the engine of that is spanking brand new.  I’ve changed the pistons…everything in that is… the shell of course is ready for war.  But once again, in life what was important to me is not to just buy things because I was thinking in the end what I could leave my children is really not just a name but a vision and an empowerment that they can be part of.  And I wanted that in my life.  I wanted that I could also use that as a way to inspire other people, to raise an army of change makers.  There are lifestyle considerations but the amazing thing that I discovered is really the paradox of giving, which is the more you give, the more you receive.  The more you’re selfish, the more everybody wants your money.  The more you earn, the more people sell you stuff that you don’t need.  Sometimes it’s just… the greatest pleasure to realize is that whenever you’re on the edge there’s always something magical that comes up that fills in the void.  There are always people wanting to give you that help just when you thought that you can’t afford it.  Today you’ve experienced that.  We entered into the group called Six Degrees for the website, they approached us and said, “How can we use our skills as website designers to create change?”  And I said, “If you help me, we can really shift this design solution if we are able to harness the world to help in our problem.”  You saw now with Rikki Kwek and other professors from the different schools, they’re willing to spread the message and the posters.  I’ve always believed that the world has this unique way whereby with every great challenge comes a great calling.  It’s sometimes not vocal or verbal but it’s something inside people that stands up to the change and it tends to balance out the world.  With every great crime comes great healing… healing that there’s something unbalanced in the world.  There’s always people, sometimes people you didn’t really expect, people from all walks of life, that rises up and fills this great need to unite people to address the… you can see it… the immediate ones like the SARS where people gave up their lives for it.  If there is corruption here, there are people who give up their lives for it… journalists.  There is always a great balance in society and I think I felt a great calling for shelter just like it’s not only my way of doing it, but there is a multitude of people rising up to the challenge.  But it’s the way that all of us responds.  Remember, the leadership here is not just because you have a political name or a great name or a position.  It’s not who you are, it’s what you do when the call happens.  When Ondoy happened or even before that, I was just looking at newspapers how typhoons always seems to be a statistics, “Another thousand dead people.”  At a certain point you just have to stop and say, “Where do you start acting ahead of time rather than reacting and experiencing disgust when it’s all over, when the loss of property and life has been done?”  

Jay-R Patron:  How was childhood to you like?

Illac Diaz:  I had a great childhood.  Of course the digital age was never… or the analog stage was not even part of my life.  My parents were very outdoorsy so most of my life was really outdoors.  My parents were building their careers at that time.  Our beach house was built by laborers and I had to paint stuff and carry hollow blocks.  My way of living is really seeing things get built in front of me with my father designing it and people coming together to build this kind of…

Jay-R Patron:  Is that also where you got this innate ability to bring ideas to life?

Illac Diaz:  I think a lot of it is my mother.  She was always telling me, having a great idea is just half, if not, it’s just 10 percent of it… but it’s the execution that separates.  I really grew up with the idea, especially in MIT… that great sketches or great white paper policies are great.  And growing up in the Philippines, we’re one of the greatest generators of white paper.  Have a catastrophe conference.  Have a great problem conference.  Have an injustice law.  But really the thing with MIT is Mens et manus, mind but ends in the hands.  Growing up in Ateneo I could not really turn my back on the fact that the greatest success was not only excellence in the intellectual pursuit but to be able to convey that knowledge in some kind of benefit to others.  It’s not just speaking the language of the school but it’s really talking about how we were educated.  I’m sure other schools are doing it, it’s just that this thing expressed itself later on in life.  I really saw that this transformation was necessary.

Jay-R Patron:  Who would you consider as your mentor?

Illac Diaz:  My mentor… I have a lot of mentors.  The mentors that I’ve never met, but yet I have idolized… kept books of them all my life. 
I’ve always been a fan of JFK that’s why I applied for Harvard.  I’ve visited his museum, I’ve gone to his house, I have met Senator Kennedy before he died.  I have just been a great fan.  I’ve been a fan of Churchill.  I’ve read a lot of his books.  I’ve seen that they have gone through some great difficulties in their life and I’m a fan of one movie that I’ve watched a thousand times.  It’s Sean Astin and it’s called Rudy.  Basically, I’ve always considered myself as somebody that… things just pop out of my head.  But it was studying at the best schools in the world that refined my way of thinking and refined my network to be able to come up with these kinds of projects.  

Jay-R Patron:  You have this wide educational background and you studied in prestigious schools in the US.  Why did you choose to go back to the Philippines and become a social entrepreneur at that?

Illac Diaz:  Because everything I studied is to become a social entrepreneur at that.  In the West, my knowledge would be well paid but I would not have an influence to create new things on a large scale.  In the Philippines, I don’t get paid as much but I can put large groups of communities to build… pioneering new towns and cities… global projects.  It’s just the way it is that I’m needed here and my specialty in what I do in creating this kind of strategic concepts and my MIT background which is creating alternative construction is what’s needed here.

Jay-R Patron:  If there’s anything you would like to change if you could go back, what would that be?

Illac Diaz:  I think I’m alright.  I think I would have been more daring.  I went to these grad schools later on in life but I wish I was not so scared about the quality of… the capacity that I’m capable of doing or Filipinos are capable of doing.  Usually you think that you can only do so much in such a great school but honestly we know so much about our country that it’s exceptional that when you go there people actually ask you about poverty, about how they can help.  Contrary to what you think that the country is out of the focus of the world, it’s actually right in the center where people can make a big difference.  I think I’m in the right place.  I’m doing stuff that I like doing.  I think it’s just the expansive capacity of helping more people at the same time.  I think one of the dreams that I have this year is really putting up a school whereby I can teach people the different types of building that I have grown accustomed to.

Jay-R Patron:  What do you think is the most pressing issue that is hounding us as a nation today?

Illac Diaz:  Back to what I was talking about… it’s very hard to have a feeling of family, a feeling of being in school, a feeling of having a community, of even having a stable community, without some kind of shelter to house these families and associations and institutions.  Everything is contained in this shelter so it’s necessary to create these kinds of areas.  If you have money then afford cement, steel and glass, but if not, and that means most of the Philippine society, can be built with what is called middle ground construction.  Can we build with something else?

Jay-R Patron:  What role does faith play in your life?

Illac Diaz:  I have gotten myself in some weird, travailing situations where I sort of ran out of money in Aswan in Egypt.  I’ve ended up accidentally hit by a car.  There are things where I’ve always found myself out and come about, and even in these things where it’s so big, the project is so big that you don’t even know how you’re going to do it.  And yet the simple fact that there seems to be an energy that whenever I come up stunted, that I am able to move ahead.  Faith for me is something where it’s community based.  Sometimes faith tends to be preachy and isolative.  But really I have found a faith that it’s Christian, and at the same time, the truth is really reflected in many other religions.  I look at the world as that, that it’s really this force to move forward and the force of good.  But the way I look at faith is really that one must act on it to prevent things from getting worse.  Not by people always doing what’s not right, but by negligence.  I think faith is a strong activator of a proactive way of living life.  I think the danger is when faith is just used as words rather than the need to do… like the sin of omission… that it’s something all to God.  I think God is one who sees the fulfillment of his words through action and not waiting for it as if it’s some kind of benediction.

Jay-R Patron:  What has been your greatest challenge in life and how did you overcome it?

Illac Diaz:  I think a lot of the problems that I face is basically that sometimes because I have such a great faith in people, sometimes I overlook the fact that sometimes people don’t enter in to the project with great faith.  Some of my partners in the last competition have actually withheld funds and don’t want to open their books on how they have been spending those funds.  It’s only later on that I realized that I’m having a hard time in getting that money and transforming it into actual benefits to the community.  Sometimes some people use NGO as an income generator rather than actual on the ground achievement.

Jay-R Patron:  What would you consider so far as your greatest achievement?

Illac Diaz:  I like the fact that people are starting to look at alternative materials, bamboo, soil, corals… inert corals of course… as new materials that they can use in the future.  

Jay-R Patron:  What advice can you give to aspiring entrepreneurs?

Illac Diaz:  I’m always very interested about entrepreneurship that does not look as a common base of customers, which is really… when all of our focus in entrepreneurship and design is for the richest 10 percent of the society… it’s well and good, it is something that we should do but the problem is if all our education, knowledge, skills and efforts focus on the richest and making the richest better, shouldn’t we consider the other 90 percent that is not in our customer base.  And what if we applied our knowledge and skills and influence for a while or even for a limited project now and then on that other 90 percent, what a world of difference we can make.

Jay-R Patron:  Any last words, any advice to… or maybe you would like to invite people to visit the website?

Illac Diaz:  On April 18, we have a great coming together.  Yes there was Earth Hour but we have to go beyond awareness.  We really have to go to solutions-based where we actually create something that is tangible and is commensurate to the fact that Ondoy has come into existence and the manifestations of it are already present and will continue.  There is a global competition called Design Agai
nst the Elements.  We are looking for architects, engineers, urban planners, people with ideas on how to build the next green community.  On our website, you can download posters but more than that tell your friends who are architects or engineers that this exists.  On April 18, with the National Geographic, we’re all going to be running at the Mall of Asia.  Register at the Nat Geo Run.  Join us and be the movement that will not only look for awareness or a token word of what happened, but really come up in the end with this kind of visionary new innovation for poor communities; how they will look, how they’ll be greener, how they will be braced for disasters.

Jay-R Patron:  Alright.  Thanks you very much.

<End of interview>