IMPORTANT NOTES REGARDING THE CASE:

First of all, what are social enterprises?

o Social Enterprises are organizations or businesses set up to tackle social,
economic or environmental issues.
o Driven primarily by social and/or environmental motives, they engage in trading
or commercial activities to pursue these objectives and produce social and
community gain.
o Profits or surpluses generated by the enterprise are reinvested to further
their social objectives.
o Ownership of the enterprise is within a community, or amongst people with a
shared interest.
o Social enterprises have a strong job creation focus to help local people and
communities.
o Social Enterprises are committed to social justice and social inclusion.
Problems before the establishment of Marina Gana Vida:
o There was a severe depletion of the quality and quantity of fish in the sea due to
unsustainable fishing practices, which in turn are causing serious social and
economic problems for the already poor fishing communities.
o Mariculture zones were established by the Philippine Government to help turn
fishermen from fish catching to fish farming. However, the poor fishing
communities lacked the capital and the technical and business skills to fully take
advantage of the opportunities. Moreover, the business environment was harsh for
these fishermen.
Jonah Nobleza decided to start a social enterprise to address the problems mentioned
above. Marina Gana Vida in Spanish can be loosely translated to earning life. MGV
had three social missions: healthy food for consumers, vibrant and happy enterprise and
labor force, and a happy earth.
o Intention: (1) to alleviate the poverty problem in the Davao region, (2) provide a
stable and healthy fish supply, (3) be self-sustainable (be able to generate profits
to cover the costs of running and expanding the business)
Nobleza and other MGV staff members were experts in value chain development,
identifying constraints in business operations, and market analysis. None of them knew
much about fish farming. They were trained through the two fishery schools in the Davao
area. Nobleza was trained at the Southeast Asian Fisheries Devvelopment Centre
Aquaculture Department.
After training, pilot programmes were conducted. Once these pilot programmes were
proven to be successful, these are scaled up into full-blown commercial operations. One
of these programs is the organic feed mill technology. Feeds accounted for 70% of
MGVs production costs. Through MGVs efforts, the feed mill technology was able to
bring down the production costs of the seeds down by 40% to 60%. Apart from using
these feeds in its own operations, these are also sold to other fisheries.
SDCAsia played an important role in jump-starting MGVs business. SDCAsia provided
the financial assistance needed by MGV while it focused on concretizing its actual
business operations.
 Addressing MGVs Three Goals:
o Happy People
MGV hired the people in poor coastal households as direct employees
fish harvesters (29), cage makers and net cleaners (28), and fish
processors. These employees were trained.
2011 MGV built a processing plant and hired 30 local Muslim women in
the Davao region to work in the plant and co-manage the plant. These
women were also trained on fish processing (removing fish bones,
marinating, smoking, etc.)
The plants operations were made transparent.
These women were happy. First, because they were able to bring
additional income for their families. Second, the plant offered
flexible eight-hour work shifts to accommodate religious festivities
These policies resulted in almost zero turnover rate of the plant
workers. (Note: Turnover rate is the percentage of employees in a
workforce that leave during a certain period of time.)
Average output for each worker was 400kg of fish meat per day.
They were paid more if they produced more. The women
monitored each others outputs.
Only women were hired in the plant.
MGV aimed to build long-term relationships with the people from poor
coastal households through providing them necessary technical training to
help them set up their own companies and become MGVs suppliers and
suppliers of other fishing companies as well. MGV also sold fresh fish to
micro fish retailers in small vvolumes and at affordable prices which they
then could sell at reasonable prices.
o Happy Earth
MGV aimed to introduce sustainable and environmentally friendly fishing
practices. They offered hatchery-bred fry (fry refers to new hatched fish)
with easy payment terms and no minimum order quantity Technical and
training assistance was also provided to help fishermen transition from
being hunters to farmers.
Instead of taking fry directly from marine waters (which caused a major
environmental problem since it did not give the fry time to grow before
taking it from its home), MGV obtained excess eggs from commercial
breeders and hatches the eggs in its own hatcheries in the maricultural
parks MGV adhered to environmentally safe practices, preventing harm to
be caused to the sea.
MGC does not use chemical pesticides in its fish production process.
Chemical pesticides result to degradation of soil and water quality, which
in the long run, also result to unsuitable environment to grow fish.
o Healthy Food
MGV produces products which do not contain preservatives or artificial
flavorings. (Eg. Bangus Pate 500 jars produced per day)
Distribution channels:
 Business buyers (hotel, resort, restaurant): MGV worked closely
with potential buyers to get the flavors of its products right
Retail customers: MGV has gourmet retail shops in Manila and
Davao which sells a variety of healthy products. These shops also
sell products from other social enterprises.
Challenges:
o In the beginning,
Donor agencies needed a proof of concept
The donor agencies referred MGV to commercial banks who called
themselves social financing institutions but the interest rates applied by
these institutions to social enterprises were the same with regular
commercial banks.
MGV ended up raising capital using its own means.
o After a while (MGV experienced respectable growth),
MGV approached the donor agencies again but were faced with the same
dilemma of needing a proof that it is able to scale up its operations and
current business model easily.
The companys scalability was constrained by MGVs social goals.
Trade-off between environmental benefits and economic benefits.

POINTS FOR DISCUSSION

We chose Alternative 2 because it stimulates actions towards finding the balance

between Marina Gana Vidas philanthropic and economic goals.
Advantages of chosen alternative:
o The workers will not be entirely replaced by machineries therefore its social goal
will not be compromised.
o Larger pool of funds
o Faster growth of business
o By introducing this course of action, aspiration to develop MGV as the leading
supplier of all natural marine products in the Davao region, if not the Philippines,
can be promising.
Disadvantages of the chosen alternative:
o This course of action requires time and effort on the part of MGV to come up with
a revised business model. Conflicts, confusion, and difficulties may arise in the
process.
Key points:
o Marina Gana Vida is to sell the same products.
o Within 10 years, Marina Gana Vida wants to employ 10,000 people from poor
coastal households as indirect employees so the expansion of its operations is an
imminent need so as to actualize this vision.
o Mission: long-term benefits for poor coastal communities therefore, our chosen
alternative is in line with this mission because our alternative does not fail to
address long-term relationships with our people. By allowing our indirect
 employees to build their own businesses, we are giving them the capacity to build
something sustainable. In turn, they could become suppliers of MGV, which
displays the commencement of long-term relationship as buyer-supplier.
o MGV will shift from manual to automated. This shift to automated operations
seeks to augment the output production of Marina Gana Vida, present the
profitable capabilities of Marina Gana Vida, address and allow investors to see
that Marina Gana Vidas scalability is able to expand not only horizontally, but
also vertically, and show that it is not constrained by its social goals and assure
the prospect investors that Marina Gana Vida can be profitable and successful as a
business with social objectives still at hand.
More outputs
Less time
Shows the ability to easily scale up its operations
o Direct employees will become indirect employees. Indirect employees are defined
as individuals who support the processes of the direct employees in the
production. By doing so, MGV is still able to provide job assurance to the people
it has already helped and is going to help in the near future to assist them in
alleviating poverty and help them rise above. Focusing on attracting potential
investors instead of replacing MGVs manual laborers with machineries is
advantageous in that, MGVs main social objective, which is to decrease
unemployment rate in the region of Davao by providing job opportunities to the
poor, will not be compromised thereby allowing MGV to stay true to its original
intention.
Does not compromise the social goals of MGV
Still provides job assurance
Poverty alleviation can still be achieved
Teaches the people new set of skills other than those related to fishing, fish
farming, fish processing, and the like, which they may utilize in other
aspects of their lives.
o It is important to note that before the conversion of these direct employees to
indirect employees, proper seminars, trainings, and other on-site exercises will be
conducted by Marina Gana Vida to ensure that they equip the direct employees
with newly formed skills and capabilities to help them perform their duties as
indirect employees.
Again, these new skills that will be imparted to the employees expands
their capabilities and imparts new knowledge that may be utilized in other
aspects of their lives.
MGV will not abandon its employees and will do everything that it takes
to be able to train them properly so as to allow these people to enjoy their
lives.
o Moreover, it is considered by Marina Gana Vida that fisheries is the main source
of livelihood and traditionally, these employees hired by Marina Gana Vida are
used to matters relating with fishing, fish farming or aquaculture, and other
 fishing-related initiatives, and that their expertise lies more on what they have
been accustomed to since the very beginning. This problem is handled by Marina
Gana Vida, by employing them as indirect employees, while at the same time,
outside of the plant, they are given resources and capital by Marina Gana Vida to
help them set up their own fish farming companies or small businesses that will
make them suppliers of MGV as well.
Not only does MGV address the sustenance of its social goal to help the
poor coastal households through job opportunities, MGV also teaches
these people to become sustainable and to help themselves.
MGV recognizes that these people are accustomed to fishing-related
activities and acknowledges the set of skills of these people related to said
area.
Strict implementation and monitoring will be done in order to guide and
provide assistance.
Capital delegation will be equal among all the recipients.
In doing this, Marina Gana Vida achieves positive results twofold: First, it
still provides job assurance to help these people combat the difficulties of
day-to-day living, which is in line with their social goal, and second, it
steers these people to what they are used to so that they are able to apply
their skills and expertise, it allows them to help themselves, and it allows
them to become self-sustainable at the end of the day.
o Marina Gana Vida believes in its people and believes in their capabilities. Its
conversion to automated processes from manual processes is primarily done in
order to attract more investors who are looking for profitable enterprises. Once
investors are attracted, these resources gathered by MGV are then used to help the
people and continue MGV goal of helping alleviate poverty.
Possible problems:
o These people from poor coastal households are accustomed to fishing, fish
farming, fish processing, and other fishing-related activities. This shift from
fishing-related or other fish farming-related activities to performing supporting
processes for the production might cause difficulties. These peoples set of skills
are already grounded on fishing, fish farming, etc.
o How will MGV be able to achieve Happy People when the people are not doing
what they are accustomed to doing? What if these people feel that their skills
arent properly utilized by MGV?
o Is there assurance that the transformation from manual to automated operations
will directly result to attracting investors? What strategies will MGV apply in
order to steer this shift towards such goal?
o The goal of Happy Earth may be compromised by the use of machines which
emits fumes, uses a considerable amount of electricity, and may be required to use
gas which will likely result to the discharge of smoke containing different forms
of harmful pollutants, and the like.
o How will the existing problems of MGV be addressed by this alternative? Is the
alternative chosen concrete enough to be able to face and combat future
problems?
o