Shawntel Nieto: Serving The Underserved

If you have food on the table, a roof over your head, clothes on your back, kids in school, running water and electricity, and a job that pays for the bills, then you are more fortunate than over 719 million people in the world living in poverty.  

To put it in context, that US$3.95 you paid for a Grande Frappuccino at Starbucks is more than the global median of US$2.15 a day that the 9.2% of the world live on. How do poor families survive? What can we do to help?  

The de facto, albeit temporary, fix to help alleviate poverty is giving seasonal donations to charities, social enterprises and non-profit entities. I say seasonal because donations always spike during Christmas-New Year and Lenten seasons as well as during the aftermath of natural calamities like typhoons, earthquakes etc. 

Shawntel Nicole M. Nieto goes beyond seasonal efforts by pro-actively working toward helping those in dire straits through sustainable long-term initiatives since she was 19.  Her starting point was her hometown Cainta, Rizal (an urban community located in metropolitan Manila). 

“Growing up in the Philippines, I have seen how crippling poverty is and of how it robs millions of Filipinos of even their most basic of rights,” she says. “Believing that the capability to live and create the life they want is every person’s right, poverty is not something I can nor will stand for.”  

The daughter of an orthopaedic surgeon father and a dentist mother, Shawntel grew up seeing her parents exemplify kindness, compassion, humility and empathy through both their day-to-day life and their chosen professions. From this, Shawntel developed an instinctive conviction to serve the underserved. 

Shawntel recalls: “Since we were young, my parents have shown my brothers and I what it means to be a person-for-and-with-others. They always reminded us to treat everyone with equal respect. It does not matter what their position in life nor relation to us is, we must appreciate and reach out to them person-to-person. This taught me both kindness and humility.”

“As both are doctors who spent most of their careers in government hospitals serving the underserved, they’ve constantly taught and shown us what it means to work to serve. Work is not just a means to earn a living, it is a way to enable life in others, in whatever way your profession can do so. This taught me service. 

“Lastly, through the little acts I would see them do, such as buying extra food for the kids or elderly whenever we’d pass by the drive thru, I was taught empathy and compassion.”

In 2015, she visited one of her province Rizal’s marginalised communities, where she met one of the residents, Aling Dolor, who warmly welcomed her to her humble home.

“There, I went inside a home with no appliances, not even a lightbulb. When I asked why, Aling Dolor, who was with me the entire day, said that electricity was simply out of the budget,” she relates. 

It was heart-breaking, to say the least. She had to do something tangible and sustainable.  

With 24 million Filipinos like Aling Dolor still living in poverty, the now 28-year-old has been working over the past several years to support underprivileged communities get access to their basic needs while advancing the growth of sustainability and sustainable development in the country. 

Shawntel first engaged in community welfare in 2015 after co-founding BMB Solutions to provide disenfranchised communities initially with the basics: electricity and water. It just was the beginning of helping people rise above poverty — an aspiration that turned into a vocation.

By 2020, she co-founded the One Cainta food Programme (OCFP), SustainablePH Inc., and SustainaRumble. OCFP focuses on providing social welfare services to marginalised communities, while both SustainablePH and SustainaRumble focus on advancing sustainability in the Philippines. 

When asked about what is next, primarily in terms of her work tackling poverty in the Philippines, she replied, “Most of the projects under our One Cainta Food Program are social welfare programs that provide supplementary aid. After finishing my Masters in Public Policy at the University of Oxford [in September 2024], I hope to kickstart and grow programs that foster economic empowerment. These projects would encompass education/training, employment support, and market + livelihood development, thus enabling people to build their own careers and futures.”

“This is so whereas within my work as a sustainability consultant, I help organisations, local governments, and multilaterals design and/or implement programs, strategies, and policies that promote sustainable and inclusive development, positive social impact, and the circular economy. In this line, I hope to engage in even more of such projects, thus helping advance sustainable development in more and/or all regions in the Philippines,” says the eldest and only girl of four siblings, all raised to be humble, grateful and respectful.

Underserved Communities 

Providing access to basic needs is the first step in beating poverty. Through BMB Solutions and the One Cainta Food Program, Shawntel has provided over 700,000 people across 20 cities and 11 hospitals with food, electricity, potable water, disaster relief, education, and employment. 

The Covid-19 pandemic had a profound impact on poverty in the Philippines (population over 118 million). In 2020, the pandemic halted economic growth, leading to even higher unemployment rates. As this trend continued into 2021, poverty rates rose to 18.1 percent (World Bank). This amounts to just under 20 million people.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, she and her family started the One Cainta Food program to support the communities in Cainta. This entailed coordinating with various private and civic organisations to acquire various goods for door-to-door distribution to households. 

At the height of the pandemic lockdown, they were distributing food and packed meals to up to 1,000 people daily, whilst also distributing relief and grocery kits to different households on a weekly basis. This initiative has since grown and become more structured that it enabled it to distribute up to 5.5 million food hampers to over 700,000 unique individuals not only in Cainta but also in 20 other neigbouring cities including Morong, Bulacan, and Antipolo.

In a post-pandemic interview with Global Thinkers Mentor, Shawntel reflected: “Beyond serving as a push to grow initiatives that supported the marginalised and underserved in my country, the pandemic has also moved me to pause and re-assess all that I deemed important. It's made me remember that, at the end of the day, my family and my loved ones are my core. My personal life is my core, my faith is my strength, and my vision is my spirit; everything else is just a bonus. 

“The accolades, the material collections, and even the trips are bonuses. They are nice to have but they are not what's most important and they are not what truly brings me the most joy. This reminder helped me be more mindful of the extent to which I intentionally live in the present, express myself, and find things to be grateful for in everything - especially the mundane. Real joy, to me, is in the seemingly mundane because that's where our appreciation for and alignment with our core, faith, and vision is almost always at.”

Advancing Sustainability Practice

People move people. Alleviating poverty necessitates a systemic approach. Keeping ONE Cainta and other initiatives to not lose momentum requires pro-actively engaging and enthusing individuals. Shawntel believes that the key to advancing the practice of sustainability is collective individuals who share the same vision and mission. 

“My goal is to advance the practice of sustainability in the Philippines so we can spearhead practices and create systems that impact our people and our planet more positively,” says Shawntel, who works as a sustainability consultant at Deloitte Inc and is a co-founder of SustainaRumble, and Sustainable PH Inc.

Sustainable PH Inc is a community of 300+ members that believe in a sustainable Philippines. It aims to ignite the passion of a generation of sustainability leaders by changing the country’s narrative into one of good governance, shared prosperity and sustainability. It works across three pillars of community, capacity, and change. It unites the country’s sustainability practitioners under the Society of Sustainability Practitioners (community), designs and runs capacity building programs such as Learn2Lead Sustainability to enable the growth of sustainability leaders in the country (capacity), and mobilises its members to come together for sustainability-driven projects in the country (change). 

SustainaRumble works toward raising public awareness of sustainable development in the Philippines.

Mentoring Changemakers 

Poverty is a state of deprivation in which people or communities lack access to resources and basic necessities needed to live a healthy and dignified life. Living in poverty means not being able to access basics such as electricity, shelter and food, nor afford medical care. The consequential issues that arise from the cycle of poverty are alarming.  

“Eradicating poverty and advancing sustainable development is everyone’s responsibility. No one person can do this alone and so, where I can, I seek to bring in and also support other people who would also want to bring about positive change. With this, I have spoken for and ran over 50 summits and workshops on youth leadership and sustainable development worldwide. I likewise mentor young changemakers who have now gone to kickstart their own social impact initiatives from Australia to India,” Shawntel says.

Shawntel undoubtedly qualified in her chosen vocation. She obtained her Bachelor in Management of Applied Chemistry as the programme awardee in 2017 and her Masters in Sustainability Management in 2019. Moreover, she has worked as a researcher focused on social entrepreneurship and sustainability, as a corporate analyst under JP Morgan & Chase Inc., as a news and public affairs TV host under IBC channel 13, and as the Philippine country manager of CSRWorks International - a sustainability consulting firm. 

Shawntel’s passion for sustainability, poverty alleviation as well as leadership and strategy hasn’t gone unnoticed. She has been selected as a Dalai Lama Fellow and One Young World Scholar, was awarded the (Princess) Diana Award, was selected as one of the Philippines’ Ten Outstanding Young Men and Women (TOYM) for 2022 and was listed as a Forbes 30 Under 30 Honoree for Social Impact. Her Masters in Public Policy at the University of Oxford made her the first Filipino Weidenfeld-Hoffman Oxford fellow-scholar.

“I see work as service and life as love. Everywhere I look, as if it has already been hardwired in my brain, I see opportunities to make things better, with ‘better’ meaning more sustainable, inclusive, or just,” she reflects. “I do not think I could go or do anything else (unless it’s opening my own dessert/ice cream shop). I just cannot help but do something whenever I could and wherever there is a need for something to be done, primarily to enable people to live and create the lives they want.” 

Debbie | ws

Images courtesy of Shawntel Nieto | One Cainta | Email: shawntelnieto@gmail.com | Instagram (@shawntelnieto) | Advancing Sustainability Practice