How Thomas Ng (WPO
Philippines) made his
company, Genashtim
Innovative Learning,
a stronger business by
engaging persons with
disabilities.
blind heroes
G
By Divine duran
“
ood morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name
is Thomas Ng, and my handicaps are poor anger
management, lack of patience, and I can’t stand
head-office mentality. What are yours?” This was
how Ng opened his presentation at the Spine Unit of
the University of the Philippines, Philippines General Hospital. He
had been invited by the doctors there to speak about how and why
he offered a job to one of their leg amputee patients.
Thomas then went on to elaborate that assembling a team is
a basic management principle. “You need to know the strengths
and weaknesses (handicaps) of each member of the team, and
craft processes, and a business model that leverages the collective
strengths of the team members, and find ways to overcome the
weaknesses. I look at persons with disabilities (PWDs) like any
employee who is not perfect,” he said.
How it all started
In 2006 Ng was a major sponsor for a concert for a computer school
for the blind in Manila. “I figured that if a blind person would go
through the struggle of learning how to use a PC, they deserved all
the help they could get. He was subsequently invited to join the board
of trustees of that computer school for the blind. At his first board
meeting, he changed the direction of the school from measuring how
many people they trained, to measuring how many people they put
into employment with their new skills.
The statistics were rather dismal. Ng then took it upon himself
to bring the blind graduates to prospective employers, to show
how productive they could be. He targeted the Business Process
Outsourcing (BPO) companies where he thought the blind graduates
could perform. “Just about everyone we met was impressed. But
after a year of bouncing between departments in the organizations,
staff changes, and the usual ups and downs of companies, I figured
this was not to be.”
Frustrated, he tried to start a BPO within the computer school.
But starting a business, with a team of visually impaired who had
no experience, proved too much of a challenge.
The hero
It was around that time that Thomas got to know Marx Melencio. At
the age of 23, Marx was gunned down randomly while buying food
at a street stall in the poorer parts of Manila. The 38 calibre bullets
to his right temple and chest irreversibly severed his optical nerve.
After a period of depression, he learnt to use a PC as a totally blind
person, and completed his college degree. This was followed by two
years of trying to land a job, which landed him in his second bout
of depression.
When he finally got a job, his salary was U L