Eradicating poverty in the Philippines



Agencies Involved

M2.0 Communications Inc.


Public Relations and Events Management


The Philippine Development Foundation (PhilDev) aspires to alleviate poverty and promote long term-growth through education, innovation, and entrepreneurship. The organization, in cooperation with the US Agency for International Development, is currently pursuing these ends through the Innovative Development through Entrepreneurship Acceleration (IDEA) program which aims to foster inclusive growth through innovative businesses.

One of the program’s major activities is the IDEA Global Entrepreneurship Symposium and Workshop. Thought leaders, practitioners, and policy makers are invited to discuss the issues, exploring the obstacles to and opportunities in the country, and challenging the participants to find innovative solutions.

Having seen the quality of M2.0 Communications’ execution of SlingshotMNL, which won a Gold Anvil Award, PhilDev tasked the team to make the third symposium a success.


Innovate the form of the symposium to create an atmosphere of innovation. The team implemented Google’s Unconference format with the search engine’s guidance to foster inclusive communication. By expanding the conversation, the ideas from the symposium are able to propagate to more people faster. 


The IDEA Symposium was triumph as hundreds came to participate in discussions and workshops. Investment, technology, and start-up media, including bloggers, online news, and leading newspapers, came to witness the dialogues, achieving a total of 39 press pick-ups from all the PR efforts. But the important result was the continued spread in different media of IDEA’s basic premise that innovation and entrepreneurship is the key to the Philippines’ economic growth.