Globe, Smart and Sun unite to save Pasig River

By: Faizza Farinna T. Tanggol

Telecommunication giants Globe, Smart and Sun Cellular have come together last May 15 to pledge support for ABS-CBN Foundation’s Kapit Bisig para sa Ilog Pasig (KBPIP), a project that aims to clean the Pasig River. Taking off from Clean and Green Foundation’s lead, KBPIP has reinvented “Piso para sa Ilog Pasig” into a text campaign where concerned individuals can easily contribute in rehabilitating the Pasig River by texting GIVE [space] ILOG then sending it to 2366 for Globe, Touch Mobile, Sun Cellular, Smart and Talk & Text.

Globe Telecommunications President and CEO Ernest Cu, Smart Telecommunications President and CEO Napoleon Nazareno, and Digitel Mobile Philippines Senior Vice President for Legal Services Atty. William Pamintuan signed a memorandum of agreement with ABS-CBN Foundation Managing Director Gina Lopez to seal the deal of this historic partnership. The heads of Globe, Touch Mobile, Smart, Talk & Text and Sun Cellular all agreed to pledge a substantial portion to the Pasig River campaign for every text hits in Piso para sa Ilog Pasig.

“Globe is very pleased to be part of this endeavor by Gina [Lopez],” said Ernest Cu, “I thought the idea was fantastic from the minute that she presented it to me over lunch one day. And it goes very well hand in hand with Globe’s CSR efforts and again, we pledge our commitment [to KBPIP].”

“We [at Sun Cellular] are indeed privileged and proud to be part of this worthwhile undertaking,” said Atty. William Pamintuan, “Together with our fellow friends in the telecommunication industry, we believe that this [the cleaning of Pasig River] is a worthwhile endeavor that all Filipinos should really support.”

“With our fellow telcos [telecommunication companies] Globe and Sun, we are prepared to join with you, Gina, in making the Pasig as it once was—a river of light and life. Let us bring life back to Pasig. And we’ll do it together because I’m certain that if we work together, there is nothing that we cannot do,” enthused Napoleon Nazareno of Smart.

ABS-CBN Interactive, the multimedia subsidiary of ABS-CBN, has also helped the Pasig River cause. Headed by its Managing Director, Connie Lopez, ABS-CBN Interactive assisted KBPIP by ironing out the mechanics for the Piso para sa Ilog Pasig text campaign.

Launched in March 2009, the Piso para sa Ilog Pasig campaign has already received around 100,000 text hits. The campaign also got a boost when different artists joined together to plug the text mechanics in ABS-CBN during the Earth Day celebration last April 22. The texts for Piso para sa Ilog Pasig will contribute to the funding for a cleaner Pasig River.

Gina Lopez enthusiastically laid out her plan to get a large volume of hits for Piso para sa Ilog Pasig text campaign. “We haven’t really gone full swing yet but from today onwards, we [at KBPIP] are really going to hit the bone especially when the school starts,” she said, “To save La Mesa Watershed, I went to the schools to get five million signatures in three months—3.5 million of those signatures came from the young. So I’m going to hit the schools again together with my team.”

“There’s no way that we can’t do this if we work together,” Lopez said, “Smart, Globe and Sun are my connection to the public. I really thank them for being our conduit.”