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Louis is one of the social entrepreneurs of Gawad Kalinga Enchanted Farm – an amazing social business lab in the Philippines – where I am currently staying as a volunteer for a few months.
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14 months ago, he came here for an internship as part of his HEC Paris business studies, and decided to launch his social enterprise here.
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What business is he into ? « Free-range chickens ».
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As you may guess, this is not really the plan he had imagined while studying in his business school !
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The first time I met Louis was on a tour of the Enchanted Farm that he guided for guests.
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That day, I learnt more about chickens than during my whole life !
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…Listening to him, observing him, it was obvious to me that he was an « authentic leader » : he had found the perfect convergence and alignment between his passion, talents, what the world needs and the way he will earn money.
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He is at the right place and knows it. And it is disarmingly natural.
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I was curious to hear his story and know more about the transformation process he went through.
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How he found his calling.
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So one evening at the Grassroot Kitchen, I interviewed him about his path.
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Meet Louis !
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Louis is 23. He grew up in Paris.
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He follows a classic education path. He attends preparatory class, goes through the competitive exams, and enters the most prestigious French business school – HEC.
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The story he shares with me is about developing intuition, developing the ability to listen to the inner voice that shows the right way. « La justesse », in French.
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But it is not that easy at first.
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At the beginning, he does not want to leave HEC Campus for an academic exchange semester abroad.
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Maybe because he would fear to leave this new world he just entered, he chose to apply to a parallel course in History of Arts, but is not selected – a form of self-sabotage, he can tell now.
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Later, one night, one of his friends tells him that an academic exchange opportunity just appeared in Tokyo. He has to make a choice right away.
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He sends an email. Is selected. Flies to Japan.
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At the time, he already has entrepreneurship in his mind. His father is an entrepreneur. When he was 16, he spent a few months in China working with an entrepreneur.
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Before starting his academic exchange in Tokyo he spends 3 months in Singapore, doing an internship in a design agency.
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He learns about branding and marketing, develops his experience of how a booming start-up works.
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He feels that he needs to travel on his own.
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He goes to Cambodia. He travels out of the beaten paths. He seeks to meet local people and share life experiences with them.
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Then he travels to Java, Indonesia.
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Later, while he studies in Tokyo, he spends two weeks travelling in the mountains. « Meditating while walking », he says. Changing plans because of a snow storm.
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He ends up living with fishermen on a lake for a few days.
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I ask him what he was looking for while travelling this way.
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He tells me that he has had a very comfortable life in a small world, and that he felt the need to step out of his comfort zone.
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To discover new things.
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To challenge himself.
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To connect to very different people in a genuine way.
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He writes everyday about his experience.
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I ask him what is the main transformation he went through.
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He says that it is all about fear.
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Getting rid of inherited, irrational fears. Breaking through the walls we build in our minds, those walls that limit who we are and who we can become.
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« It changed me ». « Tout a sauté » (hard to translate).
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More and more, he is able to feel this special affinity he has with Asia.
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When he comes back to his business school in Paris, he feels a real difference between those who spent some time abroad and those who stayed in Paris.
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He chooses the Entrepreneurship specialization.
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In order to start having practical experience, he starts an Asian grocery store distributing imported ingredients and ready-to-eat meals on the campus.
I ask him how he is perceived in the school, as he started taking a different path, widening so much his universe.
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He says that he used to have guests all the time having a cup of coffee in his room on the Campus.
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I ask him if he is an extrovert.
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He tells me that he became more and more extrovert, as he was not like that before.
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What he expresses makes me think about a quote I love and that is really present during my journey. A quote I discovered during a Non Violent Communication training I did last year in Belgium with Thomas d’Ansembourg and a group of 28 amazing change makers – hello, awesome team, if you read this article ! ;).
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« Parcourir la plus grande distance du monde : celle entre la tête et le coeur. »
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In English, I would say :
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« Travelling across the longest distance in the world : the distance between the head and the heart. »
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I thought that it is what Louis started to do, travelling on his own in Asia.
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Starting to connect more deeply to himself and authentically to others.
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And then it is time for him to find an internship
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At HEC, there are job fairs to help students find internships and jobs. Louis expresses : « The only companies that were fun were the startups ».
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He does not really know what he is looking for. He feels that what he is looking for is hard to find…
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He is taking classes related to entrepreneurship and innovation, with the objective to pursue the Master in Entrepreneurship for his last year. He took coding classes. He feels interested by environmental issues, sustainable development and ancestral know-how (as applied in craftsmanship for example).
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He is fascinated about how nature creates the most performant and relevant models. He does not know yet how this can be transformed into a job.
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He applies to a position in San Francisco, but again shot himself in the foot (French expression) as he starts preparing the case study 2 hours before the interview.
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Then he realizes that he has spent enough time pretending he would find an internship in environments that are not for him.
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He feels that he should look in direction of developing countries. He thinks about the Philippines – he had a Filipino roommate in Japan.
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On the HEC intranet he finds an internship opportunity in Gawad Kalinga (GK).
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GK is an NGO based in Manilla, founded by the Filipino entrepreneur Toni Meloto.
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It aims at ending poverty for 5 millions families in the Philippines by 2024.
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Five years ago, GK created The Enchanted Farm – an experimental hub for social entrepreneurship. A farm, an incubator for startups, and more recently, a social entrepreneurship university. Basically it is a platform for inclusive growth where rich and poor, east and west, public and private, high-school drop-outs and college graduates meet as family and build businesses together.
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Louis explains to me that while applying, he has the intuition that this is the right thing for him. He feels that he will go there, even though he doesn’t know much about GK, doesn’t really believe in humanitarian work or even social entrepreneurship.
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During the recruitment process, he expresses that he would like to develop his own project.
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He is selected.
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When he leaves Paris, he feels that he is not leaving only for 6 months but for much longer. He shares this feeling with his mother before flying to Manilla.
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He flies with a backpack, imagining that after his internhsip at the Enchanted Farm he will travel around the world exploring initiatives related to his fields of interest, such as craftsmanship.
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And this is how the adventure begins.
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When he arrives at the Enchanted Farm, he contributes to the organization of the Social Business Summit and loves it.
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Then he starts working where there is the biggest need.
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Namely : at the Animal Farm. And the most simple field to start with is chickens. Because chickens grow quickly – compared to pigs, for example. « OK. Let’s start with chickens, then ».
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The Enchanted Farm team trusts him to pursue his experimentations.
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…He goes into very hands-on activities.
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He spends his days with the farmers. He spends hours slaughtering chickens under the mango trees. He learns tagalog – the local language – with the farmers. « Like a child », he says. « Listening and repeating ».
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He integrates within the Farm communities – 50 families living there.
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He is mentored on his project by « Tito Tony », the founder of GK.
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He learns immensely, everyday.
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« It’s another world. » He discovers so many issues related to the chicken industry in the Philippines. Health issues. Economic stakes for farmers as producers and consumers. Environment challenges.
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Experiencing raising chickens everyday with the farmers, he develops a pragmatic knowledge and an intuition for good practices.
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Going through this very practical learning was necessary.
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« Slaughtering chickens represents most of my integration here ».
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« Twice a week, we would start slaughtering chickens at 5 in the morning under the mango trees, and I would be plucking feathers and removing innards until lunch. »
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« Now I can say that I needed to go through this hardship to discover what I would do with my life. »
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« Working on the ground allowed me to catch a glimpse of the reality, of what was going on, and I would later share my intuitions with experts my theories, who would confirm them most of the time. I had the feeling that I was really understanding something. »
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He understands that there is a business opportunity and a potential of social and environmental impact, by crossing local and imported breeds and reimplementing plus improving traditional techniques. A quality chicken that would restore land productivity and mitigate urban migration by providing opportunities to local smallholders. He wants to explore this.
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« After 3 months, I knew that I would stay more time here. And in the same time, there was a voice in my mind saying : « Quand même… je ne vais pas élever des poulets ! » In English it would be something like : « Am I REALLY going to be raising chicken as my job ?! »
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He takes the decision to stay 9 months instead of 6. And then 9 months becomes 1 year.
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And now he has decided to settle there…
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So, what is the problem he wants to solve as a social entrepreneur ?
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In the way things work currently, farmers cannot make a living out of raising chickens. The only way they can make enough money is through cheating – finding artificial and unhealthy ways to have chickens grow bigger and faster despite poor infrastructure and limited access to the best inputs.
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The only other options farmers have is to be tricycle drivers – local tuktuks – or try to find a job in Manilla – spending so much time in the traffic jam, and a big amount of their salary in transportation.
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Besides, poor Filipino people do not eat healthy food.
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And more globally, the way food and animals are grown nowadays to feed people is destroying the planet.
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« My dream is to feed the world with healthy food that restores the long-term productivity of the land »
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« I will help the farmers of the Philippines to have a better standard of living by improving productivity in raising pasture chickens (poulets fermiers) and connect to a demanding market where the willingness to pay is high. And doing so, I also want to allow the poor to have access to healthy food. »
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« As a social enterprise, we aim at influencing the whole industry, in the scope of more general issues such as cholesterol, obesity or allergies that have been booming in developed countries and now dramatically reach developing countries. »
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Louis explains to me that developing countries eat more and more meat. « In the Philippines, eating meat is a way to show that you have succeeded in life, that you have achieved a higher standard of living. However, the meat that poor people eat is very low quality meat. This meat is less expensive but dangerous for human health and for the environment »
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« Actually, I am raising chickens so that people eat less meat. Meat will be more expensive but less dangerous. My objective is to develop an industry of organic chickens alongside the smaller farmers.»
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The social business called « FreeBirds » was born.
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And this is how it became clear that his life would be here.
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« I am staying here putting up my social business. »
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It resonates as an evidence. « Here, you are connected to the life of people ».
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…« If you give up, you give up on people. I can’t do that. It is a responsibility I can fight for. »
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I ask Louis what are the hardest challenges he faces as a social entrepreneur.
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He explains to me that the most difficult for him is to accept not to do things.
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« There are many things I would like to do, many quick improvements I would like to implement. But I know I am not the one who has to do it. It has to come from the farmers and students I work with, because they must learn from their own initiative and experience, before being able to train other people. So I know I have to let go. That’s really not what I learnt in my business school but it is the way things work here. »
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« So I have to deal with my impatience. My frustration. It is hard. But I am aware of it, and I am learning… ».
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How do you feel right now about this adventure ?
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« Here at the Enchanted Farm I have found what I want to do with my life for the next 50 years. I want to feed this planet ! And this is what gives me so much inner strength. I have found what I will spend my time and energy on. »
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« And the second thing I have found here is my ability to inspire. It is such an amazing power. When you have a mission, when it is perfectly clear in your mind, you naturally develop the power to inspire. I know where I am, I know where my life is. »
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He concludes : « I have found peace. It is a wonderful strength in my life. »
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I took the time to write about Louis’s story because, to me, it embodies both the power and the vulnerability of finding one’s path and alignment.
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It shows that finding one’s calling takes time. It requires to question oneself and to let things decant. It requires to become alert to subtle signals. To develop one’s intuition and, above all, to decide to trust one’s intuition. To open one’s heart. To follow one’s heart. To act and do one’s best, and then to let things come to you.
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It is about having the courage to start a journey of self-discovery… having no clue about where this will lead you.
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It is about embracing the unknown and all the fears that come along. Accepting to trust oneself, people, and life.
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Thank you, Louis, for sharing your story so authentically. All the best to you !
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Une réflexion au sujet de « Louis – Filipino FreeBirds entrepreneur »
Un témoignage sensible et intéressant sur Louis à qui nous souhaitons beaucoup de succès. Il donne beaucoup, que beaucoup lui soit rendu. On souhaite très fort que d autres Louis se révèlent grâce à son exemple !
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