When you reach that stage in your career when you feel that your profession has been good to you, you could say that you have achieved a measure of success. But such success could be even sweeter when you can enable others to become successful too. In such a light, the people behind the Cirdia Foundation have embarked on a noble project to spur growth and rekindle a spirit of innovation in the country’s architecture, engineering and construction industry.
The Cirdia Foundation is the community enabling venture of Cirdia, which in turn is a Filipino multinational company that provides various skills and services for the architecture, engineering, and construction sector. The foundation envisions the Philippines to grow into a globally-competitive, technologically-advanced, and investment-preferred destination, particularly for architecture and design process delivery. It has committed to encourage the Filipino design and building professional to be the best that he can be. This is a mammoth task, but by collaborating with the academe, international specialists, and technology leaders, they hope to initiate and sustain this drive towards improving and advancing the building sector.
As a step toward their objective, Cirdia held a forum last June 2009 entitled “Building from the Ground Up” at the Ayala Museum, Makati. In the forum, industry stalwarts and experts expounded on trends and issues in the building industry, discussed prospects of local firms in the global stage, presented the challenges and responses in developing design professionals, and introduced leading software and tools to give industry players an edge.
A second event that emphasized Cirdia Foundation’s desire to cultivate talent and promote excellence in architectural design was its sponsorship of two school-based competitions. The Red Point Awards Thesis Competition is the first architectural theses contest in the country; it recognized outstanding undergraduate theses projects for the school year 2008-09. The Lines to Lives Academic Excellence Program, meanwhile, picked out top architecture students, initially from the Mapua Institute of Technology. Such competitions are great opportunities for mentoring, inspiring, and acknowledging fledgling designers. The challenge, likewise, provides them with exposure to the views of the industry at large and may eventually propel their practice through the contacts they are able to establish. Clearly, even aspiring architects have been included in the foundation’s push for improvement and growth.
Giving back to the community that supports you is the mark of a responsible citizen. The act of goodwill, coming from a respectable entity, is a good impetus for the rest of the sector to do the same. Other organizations in the construction industry would do well to follow Cirdia’s lead. You can attract blessings if you share your blessings. Any time is a good time to pay it forward.
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