New Year Remarks from the Managing Director of Leave a Nest Philippines: ”Germinating the Seeds We Have Planted as a Test Bed of Technologies”

The year 2024 was a year of exponential growth for the Leave a Nest Philippines team. We started with only nine (9) full time members (excluding the Managing Director) – and ended with fifteen (15) members at the end of November 2024. In addition, we also moved our office from West Avenue, Quezon City, to the Ortigas Center, Pasig City, Metro Manila (see here for our Press release). 

In addition to our growing team, 2024 also showed the potential of the impact of expanding our reach to other regions outside of Metro Manila. We had the opportunity to do the first implementation of Tech Planter outside of Manila – the VISAYAS Tech Planter, and well as the 1st implementation of STTP (Scholars’ Technopreneurship Training Program, previously known as Project SET), which is in partnership with the Department of Science and Technology – Science Education Institute (post-implementation news release for VISAYAS Tech Planter is here, and STTP is here). During VISAYAS Tech Planter in particular, we explored a unique model where a number of the global judges were startup companies from outside the Philippines. These were ventures that were interested in trying their technologies in the Western Visayas region, and after the competition day itself, Leave a Nest bridged them to several stakeholders in the area to foster collaboration in testing out their technologies.

We were also able to cap off the year with 6 Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) – 1 with a private university in Manila, another with a government agency, 3 universities outside of Manila, and lastly, our first MOU with a high school, which is also located outside of Manila (you can find more information about these in our Press Release page). Through the seeds that we have planted outside of the Manila Metropolitan area, we plan to build more on the foundations that we have created to create more effective change through science and technology in the different regions of the Philippine archipelago.

Stepping further into the regions to create more impact and bridge more technologies from Japan

In 2025, Leave a Nest Philippines will further expand some of its initiatives, particularly the STTP, to 3 other regions in the Philippines – in the attempt to reduce the problem of Brain Drain in the country. Creating more science entrepreneurs in the country allows for more R&D focused startup companies to be born, which also provides more jobs for scientists and engineers and other STEM related professionals. However, we would like it to not just end here and will also make sure to make more sustainable ecosystems in the regions through involving not just the government, but also private stakeholders as well, and in addition, implementing our other initiatives in the regions. These will include the continuation of VISAYAS Tech Planter, which will be held in Cebu on August, the implementation of the first MINDANAO Tech Planter, to be held in Davao on July, and the implementation of the first regional forum of the Hyper Interdisciplinary Conference in the Philippines, which is the HIC Iloilo Forum, to be held in Iloilo City on September. For these new initiatives in the regional areas, the Philippine subsidiary will be furthering its role as a Test Bed of new technologies by again bringing startup ventures or other companies over with the purpose of trying out their technologies in the aforementioned regions.

Creating more places for knowledge manufacturing – even at a young age

In 2025, we will be implementing the first ever Science Castle in the Philippines – which is a place for young researchers to look for ways to connect with others and further their research. The Philippine office, in particular, is the fourth (and last one as of the moment) to implement the Science Castle among the offices of the Leave a Nest Group in Asia. The reason behind this is that there have also been multiple existing research competitions for high school students in the Philippines, and the team initially felt that there was already enough room for budding researchers to be able to display and hone their research skills. However, through the previous initiatives that we have done to support the research activities of high school students, including the TSUNAGU Research Project, and the Ki_ni_naru Project, in the Philippines, high school students have been instinctively doing research related to creating solutions for issues in the country – which also aligns with the intention of creating future science entrepreneurs in the country and having them start at a young age. In the first implementation of Science Castle Philippines, we plan to focus on this and give awareness to these young minds that the research that they are doing will go a long way in creating change in the country. More importantly, as the core purpose of this initiative is to expand the researcher community, even at an early age, Science Castle itself is not a competition, but a place for these young researchers to share about what they are doing, communicate with each other, and also get feedback from people from academia and industry on how to further their research, which is also a key differentiating factor to other current research events for high school students in the Philippines. 

Expecting “sprouts” of impact in the next year through creating relationships

As 2024 has already ended, and we would like to deeply thank all of our partners who have seen the importance of what the Leave a Nest Group does. For 2025, we hope that through the new initiatives we have started, more and more will be able to see the impact that we do and support our cause – as this is the key for Leave a Nest Philippines to make even more good change in the country, that will surely lead to the acceleration of the development country, and will boost us in realizing our group vision of “Advancing Science and Technology for Global Happiness.”

Happy New Year to everyone – and we hope to collaborate with you soon!

Yevgeny Aster T. Dulla, PhD
Managing Director
Leave a Nest Philippines, Inc.