Armed with the craft of baking, Anj Mariano-Calungcaguin and Yok Calungcaguin founded the “The Make Peace Bakery” located at the Gawad Kalinga (GK) Enchanted Farm in 200__. Their mission is to develop a training program on baking that will create structured mentoring environment conducive for developing entrepreneurial spirit and baking skills. The social enterprise caters to the Filipino youth of humble backgrounds.
Anj and Yok, who were previously involved in a catering company in Quezon City, baked their idea of putting up a startup using the inspirations they have imbibed during their attendance to the GK Social Business Summit in 2016.
At present, the ingredients of the Make Peace Bakery are sourced out from Quezon City and Manila. They also obtain fresh produce from the GK Farm, CBE Farm, and surrounding farms and they plan to expand the sourcing from the local farms in the future.
The youth that they hire and train are either out of school youth or part of the School for Experimental and Entrepreneurial Development (SEED) program. Rolando Dela Cruz, 21 years old, one of the students of SEED who have been trained and now part of the core team, says that patience and passion are the key to make delicious and naturally baked breads. He quoted, “Kapag may tiyaga, May tinapay”.
The The Make Peace Bakery has a wide variety of products to offer including Chocolate Cakes (P15/ slice), Sweet Doughnut (P6/ piece), Muffin Kababayan (P10/piece), Pan tsokolate (P13/ piece), Banana Bread (P15/ slice), and Pan de Yema (P6/ piece). For special occasions, they can produce up to 30 kinds of baked goods. Different selection of products are offered every day and the excess or unsold bread are given to livestock owners for animal feeding.
The first socially-aware bakery has multiple distribution channels. These include The Make Peace Bakery store within the GK Enchanted Farm. The various social enterprises associated with the GK Farm, namely, Grass Roots Kitchen, Karabella, Oasis, SEED students, Mad Travel, Oh My Goats, and Free Birds. Furthermore, The Make Peace Bakery also distributes through various farmers’ markets in Manila.
In the future, the The Make Peace Bakery envisions to replicate their model in other GK communities to achieve their societal cause of employment development and skills training. The other branches would then be managed and operated by the youth that they will training, allowing them to become social entrepreneurs themselves. This is to ensure that they youth become the business partners and new breeds of social entrepreneurs instead of just having them as salaried employee.