Giving the differently abled a chance

Business World, Thursday, July 27, 2006

Imagine a young lad of 16 energetically refereeing basketball games at the Philam Village in Quezon City. Freeze frame. A few years later in 1961, the same man during his midnight stint as a disc jockey (DJ) with dzBB is aghast to find that, instead of a recording of the Philippine National Anthem, he was about to play on the air a popular zipper commercial. What to do?

If you are Noli Agcaoili, you whistle the entire Anthem. Afterward, instead of turning in the prankster, he decided to face the consequences with no less than Bob Stewart of the Republic Broadcasting System. Thus ended what could have been an illustrious career in broadcasting. Tough guy, eh? Well, time to move on, or so Noli thought.

Moving on meant taking up his long-awaited graduate studies in the U.S. Or so he thought again. While there, his good friend Boy Guevara sent word to Volkswagen America to train Noli. He also unders-went training in their ad agency---one of the hottest creative shops then, DDB (Doyle, Dane and Bernbach) – the same agency which came up with the advertising for Volkswagen that gained them worldwide recognition for the “Think Small” campaign.

On his return, he joined DMG, the Volkswagen Philippine distributor, initially as advertising manger. Through a lot of hard work and training on distributor management, Noli eventually became assistant marketing director, reporting to a German national seconded to DMG, Inc. For his efforts, he received the Volkswagen International Gold Pin for Market and Promotional Planning awarded in West Germany in 1968.

With Noli’s career path on the consistent rise, he was pirated by General Motors and joined as marketing staff manager.

Making it his business to learn everything about the automotive industry, Noli went on to train in all aspects of dealer manpower development and management, attending seminars in the US, Singapore and Hong Kong. In all his training sojourns, Noli traveled alone so easy to do back them for someone of his stature.

Eventually, he became assistant general sales manager of GM Philippines, again reporting to an expat boss , but doing all the work himself.

While with GM, Noli had the stellar distinction of being the highest ranking Filipino executive, a feat that was not ot be duplicated until many more years had passed.

Noli was also responsible for forming GenCars, making it the number one GM dealer in the Philippines within its first year.

Looking at his CV shows an impressive career from automotive to real estate, health insurance to electrical equipment, and, later, property development. Noli seemed able to do well at anything he laid his hands on. But let me stop here, lest I miss out on the most important facet of Noli’s life.

He had been “differently abled” since he was stricken with polio at age two. Nowadays, for the uninitiated, this means disabled! Until I was writing this article, I was unaware that Christopher Reeve of Superman fame was able to get the United Nations to adapt this as the politically correct term to denote the disabled.

Disabled or differently able, call it what you may – this has never fazed Noli. He seems completely impervious to his mobile restrictions and has instead honed in on other talents. On more than one occasions, Noli forgets he has only one good leg and can only hobble about without his crutches. He feels life has been kind to him and it’s now payback time! So, together with some friend he roped-in, he formed The NOVA Foundation For Differently Abled Persons, Inc.

Their vision is to promote the full participation and self –reliance of differently able persons to be gainfully

employed and integrated into the corporate environment. In fact, as I am writing this, Noli has been able to convince the Philippine Association of National Advertisers (PANA) to include in their Web site an ad about the advantages of employing the differently able. To start with. They are far more loyal than most staff members and he has statistics to prove this.

The ADBoard is presently arranging with the Creative to prepare commercials ads promoting awareness and support for the differently able sector in general and advocate for their acceptability able sector in general and private sector that should evaluate their ability, not disability.

So Noli is focusing on the educated and unemployed by providing them with ICT skills such as encoding and data entry so they will be able to qualify for employment in the IT business. At the NOVA Foundation’s ICT Training Center, to date they have trained 138 differently able individuals.

The foundation also provides the differently able with interim employment for them to learn to work in a corporate setting. Here they get to learn the correct mind-set and attitude and can be assimilated into large companies.

The foundation also has work-at –home program for medical transcription which was awarded as a first-of-its king program by the World Bank for its innovation and unique features. Started in March 2004. it is also funded in part by AusAID, the Australian Agency for International Development. Of the original 25 trainees, 14 have completed the course, more than half are already employed and the others are being considered by other MT companies.

Complimentary to this, the foundation has developed online distance education program for medical transcriptions which is designed for the visually and orthopedically impaired who cannot travel. Training will be conducted via the Web and will soon be launched.

Noli has virtually given up all his other commercial ventures to concentrate on this venture. He has been able to entice like-minded individuals to comprise his board. The list reads like a who’s who in Philippine business. Alphabetically, they are Benito R. Araneta; Roman A. Azanza, Jr.; Josue A. Camba, Jr.; Rafael E. Evangelista; Jose T. Garovillo, Jr,; Atty. Felipe L. Gozon; Domingo S. Guevarra, Jr,; Benjamin R. Punongbayan; Noel C. Onate; Ma. Carmen Agcaoili-Orena; Jose Z. Osias; Sonia M. Roco; Atty. Ramon E. Rodrigo; Ernesto b. Rufino,Jr; and , of course, Noli.

In this day and age of desperately trying to find heroes, we have in our very midst individuals who are doing the Philippines proud. May their tribe multiply!

With this, Noli, you can now sing the National Anthem --- for all I care, you’ve certainly earned the right!