mikocanares Associates, Business Planning, Capacity Building, Facilitation, Financial Management, Internships, Monitoring and Evaluation, Non-Government Organizations, Student Training

Step Up Celebrates 2013 with renewed optimism

Step Up Consulting Services held its pre-New Year party last 29 December 2012New Year Party at the Villa Alzhun Tourist Inn and Restaurant.  The party, attended by Step Up pool of consultants, their kids, and the trainees of the firm in the summer of 2012, was intended to celebrate the accomplishments of the firm in 2012 and also thank its main stakeholders within the firm in its contribution for the upcoming projects of the organization in 2013.

Step Up is now on its 9th year and its pool of consultants has significantly grown.  Its pool of consultants are researchers, local government practitioners, development workers, and professors who are committed to the the development of organizations, institutions, and communities.  Established as a social enterprise, Step Up is dedicated to assisting local communities, people’s organizations, local government units, non-profits, and business enterprises, in the delivery of services that benefits the society in general.

Step Up is also committed to training future leaders. As a strategy, it accepts five trainees each summer, selected from several applicants, to be trained in the provision of capacity building, financial management, and development research services to clients; these are the firm’s core services. Previous interns later became CPA board exam placers while majority now holds successful jobs within the country and elsewhere.

Step Up thanks its previous clients for believing in the capacity of the firm to provide quality services.  In 2013, Step Up plans to launch two programs that will benefit communities as well as children.

mikocanares Business Planning, Capacity Building, Facilitation, Financial Management

Step Up Assists a new resort in Panglao

Step Up Consulting Services, th255rough its managing consultant Michael Canares, was hired to assist the planning session of an upcoming resort in Panglao, Bohol.  The resort is due to open this year.

Mr. Canares has a substantial experience in the resort and restaurant business. He served as management consultant for almost ten years in one of the premier properties in Alona Beach – the Alona Palm Beach Resort and Restaurant before it was sold in early 2011.

Currently, Mr. Canares is also management consultant of C U Restaurant, and C U at Sun Restaurant in Panglao. In a recent talk series at the Yuchengco Museum to celebrate 150 years of Swiss presence in the Philippines, Mr. Canares, together with Alona Palm Beach Resort and Restaurant owner Mr. Marcel Brunner, talked on planning, maintaining, and constructing a beach resort in paradise.

mikocanares Associates, conference presentations

Canares speaks at the 67th PICPA Annual Convention

4673877Michael Canares, managing consultant of Step Up Consulting services served as one of the plenary speakers in the recently concluded 67th Annual Convention of the Philippine Institute of Certified Public Accountants held Butuan City. Mr. Canares spoke at the sectoral forum on Education, Commerce and Industry, and Public Practice.

Mr. Canares’ talk was entitled ‘Beyond Accounting: What can CPAs do to contribute to development?”.  The abstract of Mr. Canares talk which was well received by the audience is reproduced below:

Accountancy curriculum in the Philippines is developed to prepare students to handle complex accounting information needs of corporate businesses. To a large extent, students become involved in discussions that highlight their role to the growth of businesses as a major contributing factor to the economic growth of a country and the world. But little attention is made on how accountants can participate in a process of ‘development’ that widens the range of human choices (Gasper 2002), on the concept that clearly distinguishes means and end (Sumners 2003), on that which expands the real freedoms that people enjoy (Sen 1999). In effect, accounting as a practice seems to serve only the interests of those who have the capacity to hire accountants. However, accounting knowledge and skills are important whatever be the size of business, and probably even more to those enterprises struggling to survive, to those engaged in non-profit work, and to those who depend on informal entrepreneurship for daily existence.

Literature is replete with a multitude of cases that require the attention of accountants. For example, while entrepreneurial condition in the country is high (GEM 2007) which in turn creates jobs for the poor, these are mostly necessity entrepreneurs and are informal in nature(Siba and Serrano 2006) with less technical support (Habito 2007) especially in the context of finance and financial knowledge (Canares 2011). While cooperatives constitute more than 10% of the Philippine domestic economy (OCDC 2010), several fledgling cooperatives are unable to hire auditors. While it is legislated that local
government units should create internal audit departments, most LGUs in the country do not comply for lack of knowledge and professional personnel. While stricter financial controls are imposed on profit enterprises, lesser attention is drawn on non-profit organizations implementing ‘development’ projects that even resulted to questionable transactions of high-profile NGOs in the country.

This paper argues that there are different avenues where accountants should be able to, and must contribute to a rather unexplored area in the profession – engaging in the development discourse and in helping build a country. The Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants in the country recognizes that the distinguishing mark of the profession is its responsibility to the public and that accountants accept their “duty to society as a whole”. This will provide concrete examples on how accountants in government, in education, and in public practice can fully respond to the current challenges of good governance, growth, poverty, and inequality.

mikocanares Associates, Capacity Building, Facilitation, Monitoring and Evaluation, National Government Agency, Results-based Management

Step Up Assists PCW

PCWStep Up Consulting Services assisted the Philippine Commission on Women in refining the results chain of one of the components of a project it implements with the support of AECID.  This activity was done in a training workshop held in Manila last 19-21 November.

The training workshop was attended by representatives from 6 provinces, namely, Aklan, Albay, Iloilo, Mindoro, Saranggani, and Surigo del Norte as well as by representatives from the Project Management Office and the Philippine Commission on Women.

The objectives of the training-workshop were to make participants understand the  basic concepts and principles of RBM as a tool in project development and management; practice the use of the RBM tools using the three-year project target for LGUs; arrive at clear indicators for the 3 year-targets and provide an overview of project development and management including its planning methodologies and tools.

The participatory, inter-active, and activity-based learning sessions proved productive with the adult learners.  The participants were able to efficiently assimilate new concepts better because of this approach.  Likewise, the RBM workshops helped crystalize ideas of participants and made more explicit their theories of change in so far as the project is concerned.

The diversity of outputs is impressive in terms of sectors and themes.  Saranggani concentrated on indigenous communities and indigenous women, Aklan on VAW victims, Albay on disaster-prone communities.  Surigao del Norte and Mindoro focused on women entrepreneurs while Iloilo tried to cover several marginalized women groups.

Step Up will continue to assist PCW in this project.

mikocanares Associates, conference presentations

Step Up Managing Consultant Speaks at Yuchengco Museum

Michael Canares, Managing Consultant of Step Up Consulting Services spoke on the topic “Planning, Constructing, Maintaining A Beach Resort in Paradise”. He shared the panel with Marcel Brunner, Swiss architect who built Alona Palm Beach Resort and Restaurant in 2000.

Mr. Brunner talked on the his dream of constructing a beach resort in Panglao, Bohol which he later implemented while Mr. Canares walked the audience through the challenges of maintaining the resort to standards, given the larger problems on spatial planning, environmental condition, and uneven development.

It can be recalled that Mr. Canares was Alona Palm Beach’s management consultant until the time that the property was sold to Hennan Resorts.

The lecture was held last 24 November at the Yuchengco Museum in Makati City.  It was attended by more than 150 people – architects, architecture students, investors, and academics.  The lecture is part of the lecture series that the Swiss embassy sponsors at the Yuchengco Museum in line with the 15oth celebration of Swiss-Philippine Relations.  An exhibit, Swiss Positions: 33 Takes on Sustainable Approaches to Building is also on-going the the museum and the lectures  that come with it runs until the first week of December.

The audience was challenged by Mr. Canares when he argued that much of the built environment in the next 100 years will be shaped by planners, architects, engineers. Mr. Canares challenged the architects in the audience to help society build a sustainable world.

mikocanares Associates, Capacity Building, conference presentations, Research Projects

2 Step Up Consultants Attend OEGN Meeting

OEGN TagaytayTwo consultants of Step Up Consulting Services attended the Open eGovernance Research Network Meeting held last 10-11 November 2012 at the Potter’s Ridge Hotel in Tagaytay.  The meeting was sponsored by IdeaCorp, a non-stock non-profit corporation with Dr. Emmanuel Lallana as head.

Resident statistician of Step Up Ms. Jare Arawiran and Managing Consultant Michael Cañares attended the meeting. Mr. Canares presented the research proposal on open egovernance for local government units developed by the firm which initially got the nod of the World Wide Web Foundation and IDRC.  Dr. Lallana is the Step Up’s appointed mentor.

The research network meeting was attended by researchers from across the globe, more notably Uganda, Canada, India, Bangladesh, and the Philippines, who are at the forefront in researching topics related to eGovernance.

mikocanares Associates, Capacity Building, Monitoring and Evaluation

Step Up in 2nd M&E Network Forum in Manila

Michael Cañares, Managing Consultant of Step Up Consulting Services attended the 2nd M&E Network Forum held at Bayleaf Hotel, Intramuros, Manila on 7-8 November 2012.

The forum, attended by more than 100 M&E practitioners, was the second series of the annual forum sponsored by the National Economic Development Authority and UNICEF. This year, the theme of the forum was EVALUATION POLICY: A GATEWAY TO IMPROVED PERFORMANCE AND ACCOUNTABILITY, and it opened with the Keynote Address of Mr. Colin Kirk, the Director of Evaluation of UNICEF in New York. The first M&E Network Forum was held last year, on the same date, in Ortigas (please see photo).

There were four interesting sessions in the forum – In-Country Processes and Procedures for National Evaluation Framework, Evaluation Approaches and Methodologies, Innovations on M&E Approaches, and Evaluation as Undertaken by Stakeholders. Presenters coming from the development organizations as the Asian Development Bank, NEDA, Ibon Foundation, the National Statistical Coordination Board, the Department of Interior and Local Government, USAID Philippines, GIZ, UNICEF, and DBM, made the sessions interesting and insightful.

An interesting information was shared in the forum by NEDA Deputy Director Rolando Tungpalan regarding the updating of the Philippine Development Plan and the corresponding M&E framework that is expected to be publicly available by the first quarter of 2013.  The participants expressed appreciation for this new development as this would serve as a guide to various stakeholders in their work towards a better Philippines.

mikocanares Business Planning, Non-Government Organizations

Step Up Assists Vincentian Missionaries Social Development Foundation

Payatas dumpsite, courtesy of Sean Miller’s blog at seanmillerblogs.com

Step Up signs recently a consulting contract with the Vincentian Missionaries Social Development Foundation, Inc. (VMSDFI).  The non-government organization is based in Quezon City and has tasked Step Up to formulate a business plan for a community enterprise that it helped establish in Payatas.

The Journal of Environment and Urbanization (1998) described VMSDFI as “a church-based organization which has been working in the urban slum community of Payatas, Quezon City, since 1991, in pursuit of community development goals for the lowest 20 per cent of the urban poor population.”  Its office is located at 221 Tandang Sora Avenue, NIA Road, Quezon City.

In the initial fieldwork, it was observed that while technical skills and assets are available at the level of the people’s organization assisted by VMSDFI, management skills that would make a community enterprise sustainable is wanting.  Step Up envisions to refocus VMSDFI’s efforts in assisting the organization through the preparation of a business plan suited to the context of both the beneficiary group and the assisting organization. The beneficiary group, in this case, manufactures different products made from waste and other materials.

Lead consultant for this engagement is Mr. Alvin Luis Acuzar assisted by research associate Anthony Tanio.

mikocanares Capacity Building, Internships, Student Training

Step Up Interns Pass CPA Board Exams

Four of Step Up interns in the summer of 2011 passed the recently concluded CPA Board exams.  The interns, who were students of Managing Consultant Michael Cañares who spent their JBAP program in the firm now joins the select few of CPA professionals in the country.

The four interns, now CPAs, are Mr. Jayneil Nacorda, Mr. Frank Lorenzo Pizarras, Ms. Hananera Rasonabe, and Mr. Anthony Dominguez.  Mr. Nacorda is from San Francisco, Agusan del Sur and helped Step Up in its financial management and project evaluation contracts.  Mr. Pizarras, of Tagbilaran City, was involved in the finalisation of the book “Accounting for Non-Accountants” published by HNU Publication Center last year.  Ms. Rasonabe of Calape, Bohol was assigned to financial management and research consulting assignments while Mr. Dominguez of Panglao was involved in both research and capacity building engagements.

Since Step Up started operations ten years back, it has always been its goal to train future professionals in different aspects of consulting work. Step Up’s strength are on financial management, development research, and capacity building and the interns get the sufficient training on these engagements.  The training program at Step Up has been praised by its interns as contextual, productive, challenging, and inspiring.

It can be recalled that one of Step Up’s intern, Mr. Abraham Jose Apit landed 6th place in the October 2011 exams.  Almost a hundred percent of Step Up trainees since its started passed the CPA board exams.

Step Up congratulates the four new CPAs and wishes them success in their future endeavours.

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Step Up manager presents paper in Helsinki conference

Managing Consultang of Step Up Consulting Services, Mr. Michael Canares, presented a paper in the recently concluded conference on Climate Change and Development Policy in Finland last 26-28 September 2012.  The conference, attended by more than 150 participants from all over the world was held at the Marina Congress Center in Helsinki and was sponsored by the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research.

Mr. Canares presented his paper entitled “The Sudden Shift: What Causes Increased Local Government Response to Climate Change Challenge in the Philippines” in the session on Climate Change and Local Governance.  The paper argues that incorporation of the climate change agenda is more of a result of top-down incorporation than as an agenda understood and owned by local stakeholders.

The paper received mixed reviews with other scholars arguing that the climate change challenge is better responded by macro-actors and instruments especially in the context of mitigation.  Mr. Canares, however, argues, that it is important that local stakeholders are well-informed of the issue and the options for response because ultimately, adaptation measures need to be incorporated to local plans and processes.