SOMETIMES, when wondering what meaningful work or activities we may have done that would have impacted favorably on the life of other people, we remember the many times we probably engaged in volunteer work.

There are no limits to the types of volunteer work available to any civic-spirited citizen. I remember first seeing local versions of “Candy Stripers,” or student volunteer aides helping out in hospitals and charity clinics instead of spending or wasting time in malls. There are also those who are active in civic groups or organizations and who take time to work in depressed communities. Then, there are groups like Habitat for Humanity and Gawad Kalinga that actually build communities from scratch and, in the case of the latter, help nurture them along with much-needed doses of spiritual and livelihood development.

Come 2010, maybe individuals and companies will find themselves patrolling voting precincts and helping ensure that the votes are counted as cast, and that the people’s will is respected. The possibilities for helping others are endless.

My recollection on the founding date is fuzzy, but maybe a decade ago, then senator Serge Osmeña decided to put some of his community development funds to good use instead of the usual pork-barrel exercises. He set aside funds for the study and establishment of a volunteer group of active and retired business professionals who would then give some time to help small and medium enterprises.

After some time, and with technical assistance from the US Agency for International Development, the Entrepinoy Volunteer Foundation was established. The first chairman was former science and technology secretary Cef Follosco, backed by a dedicated group of businessmen and professionals who were all committed to helping small enterprises get off the ground.

With meager resources, the foundation managed to help many companies and entrepreneurs. I remember one case wherein a company dealing in sports-fashion accessories approached us for help with what they thought was an accounting problem. It did not take the ones assigned to take a look to figure out that the problem was, instead, rooted in slow-moving inventory that tied up the firm’s cash and depleted its other assets. We also pointed out the fatal practice of keeping large inventories of what are, at best, seasonal items being sold to a fickle public that changes its tastes regularly even in a single year. Thus, they had this severe problem of being stuck with a lot of inventory of items that had been “left behind” by the market.

We suggested that they sell what they had at a steep discount. Painful, but better than being wedged in by inventory carrying costs and tied-up working capital.

A tie-up with a Canadian group of retired professionals also allowed us to tap into a resource base of very experienced professionals with deep knowledge in their areas of expertise. For example, a local industrial product manufacturer obtained one such expert through Entrepinoy at a fraction of what they would have spent to hire an active industry executive. The retiree got a paid vacation to the Philippines together with his wife, and he happily began to reorganize the firm’s production processes. Needless to say, the collaboration produced a very happy company that had a slew of better products available in the market in succeeding years.

Imagine, therefore, what we can do for the country if even a fraction of the retired executives were to spend just a little time each week advising the Aling Marias and the bunch of new entrepreneurs being spawned by microfinance programs? We would create meaningful change and progress from the bottom up.

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Free Enterprise is a rotating column of members of the Financial Executives Institute of the Philippines (Finex), appearing every Wednesday and Friday.