Bringing Together the Archipelago for 2024

It is the start of a new year again for the Leave a Nest Group, and Leave a Nest Philippines as well.

Leave a Nest Philippines, officially incorporated on March 10, 2021, will be celebrating its 3rd Anniversary this year. Ever since our establishment, starting with just 3 members, we have been expanding our Knowledge Manufacturing Platform around the Philippines, but mainly in Manila, the capital of the country.

With our subsidiary mission of “Harmonizing Science and Technology Stakeholders for the Empowerment of Filipinos”, we have been trying to bring together people from academia, government, and industry, to further improve the science and technology ecosystem in the Philippines.

At the start of the year 2023, we kicked-off our first ever government project, Project SET (now currently known as STTP). Project SET is a partnership between the Department of Science and Technology – Science Education Institute (DOST-SEI) and Leave a Nest Philippines, which aims to train DOST-SEI scholars for science and technology entrepreneurship. The program lasted for 10 months until October, where around 70~80 scholars from NCR and Region IV-A joined, competing through a pitch Demo Day at the end of the program.

In March 2023, we implemented the first face-to-face Career Discovery Forum (CDF) in the Philippines, which was met with 537 participants, our biggest count yet. Through this initiative, university students were able to have a better insight into the careers that they might be able to pursue when they graduate. At the same time, we were able to have as well 10 industry partners for this initiative, the biggest number of local company partners for a single initiative ever since the subsidiary was established.

In addition, during this event, a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was signed between Leave a Nest Philippines and Mapua University, our venue partner. Last year, we have been actively strengthening our ties with academia as well, aside from Mapua University, we also forged MOUs with the Ateneo de Manila University, and CDObites under the University of Science and Technology of Southern Philippines, all by March 2023. Adding on our MOU with the Iloilo Science and Technology University which was signed in 2022, Leave a Nest Philippines was the first among the Leave a Nest Group to be able to sign five (5) MOUs with universities.

Lastly, we also had continued negotiations with different stakeholders for the Leave a Nest Forest Project, which aims to realize an autonomous system where humans and forest co-exist, and is being piloted in the Philippines due to the passion of, and our serendipitous meeting with our group company, Galansiyang.

This 2024, with the objective of the Leave a Nest Group of “Creating more Experimental Projects”, in mind, Leave a Nest Philippines aims to challenge strengthening our initiatives and Knowledge Manufacturing Platform in the regional areas of the Philippines, with the goal phrase of “Scatter and tie together”.

As 2024 is a year of experimentation for all of the Leave a Nest Group, we are challenging having a wider network and more activities in the rural areas because the Philippines is an archipelago – and we need to be more inclusive, hence “scatter”. This word also indicates the meaning of how innovation and challenges start, as something with not much structure – which is why we also plan to “tie together” – to try and create a systematic way to bring together our different stakeholders not just in Metro Manila, but around the country as well.

In line with this, we are happy to announce that we will be establishing the Local Development Team this year, which will be in charge of planning and looking over our activities and platform in regional areas outside of Manila.

Related to this, we will be implementing some of our initiatives in other regions, such as challenging Tech Planter in the Visayas region, and moving forward with our activities related to the Leave a Nest Forest Project in Mindanao.

Other than our region specific activities, we will also be challenging new initiatives this year, which will also be open to the whole country, if possible:

• Ki_ni_naru Project, where we aim to train high school students to do research
• Yugto, where we help students choose the best university program for them through an event where universities and companies are involved
• SCENT, which is a Leave a Nest mainly-organized science entrepreneurship project
• Tech Venture Meet-Up, which aims to further give support to incorporated deep technology startups

With our current team of 11 members, we hope that these new challenges will help us move towards our mission of “Harmonizing Science and Technology Stakeholders for the Empowerment of Filipinos”, and also our group vision of “Advancing Science and Technology for Global Happiness”. 

For a better Philippines this 2024!

 

January 31, 2024

Leave a Nest Philippines, Inc.
Representative Director   Dr. Yevgeny Aster T. Dulla