Blog #1: The "Beginning" of our Journey 

    This entrepreneurial mind subject letting us students experience what really is being an entrepreneur and through this activity our goal is to learn how to achieve having an entrepreneurial mind. So with an entrepreneurial mindset, we were tasked to find out problems that people might have experience this time and proposed a solution that would help them. From here, I will share about the “beginning” of our entrepreneurial journey amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

Meeting my Entrepreneurial Mind Journey Companions

Before the interview week begin, we formed a group and assigned each other’s roles. Forming a group is harder than I imagined it is because we are studying in an online setting already, communication among our classmates is limited. But thank God, I knew some of them already which brought us together and became a companions in this journey

    Here we had our first virtual meeting together, during this time we assigned our roles and I was chosen to be the leader in our group. To be honest, I don't really have the confidence to take the leader’s role because sometimes I don't believe in myself and I am a really shy type of person, in short, I knew I didn't have the quality of being a leader. But I thought that this is also a chance for me where I could overcome my weakness and develop myself through this experience. My group mates assured me as well that we will help each other out and think that we are all leaders in exporting effort for the group.

The Beginning of Discovering Problems (week1 & week2 interview)

We interviewed people in our community and find out problems that they experienced during this time. The group had agreed to interview two persons each and here is how our interview went. 

          Glaiza Castillo’s Interview Experience:

    First she interviewed Ms. Wingn Vi Atienza, a student and her problem is dealing with online class expenses. For her situation, the data that she pays is not enough to sustain her online class activities.

   

    Second interviewee is Ms. Nica Pulido, a 2nd year accountancy student at Central Mindanao University. The problem she had is unstable data connectivity and consumable data for her online classes.

         Ara Dumalaog’s Interview Experience:

    Her first interviewee is Ms. Margie Alagasi, a 23 years old student residing at Dalirig, Manolo Fortich, Bukidnon. The problem she shared being a student is having unstable internet connectivity. Because of that, she could not attend her online discussion and she uses the PDF file that the teacher has provided for them instead and that gave her a hard time learning on her own. Moreover, the effect of having unstable internet connectivity also gave her a hard time catching up with the updates and that makes her in rush to finish the requirements which gave a disadvantage for not doing the activity properly.

    Ara also interviewed Mrs. Eva Escol, a teacher residing at Dalirig, Manolo Fortich, Bukidnon. Mrs. Escol also belong to the same community with the first interviewee, Ms. Margie. So as a teacher, she also had a hard time teaching because of unstable internet connectivity that their place has experience until now.

Jim Loable’s Interview Experience:

    Jim interviewed two students from the same municipality of Wao, Lanao del Sur. The first interviewee is Mr. Jamse Colin Lovino from Brgy. Katuntungan and the second interviewee is Mr. Jake Mendoza from Brgy. Eastern. Both of them have the same problem which is the unstable internet connectivity for online classes, but their situation is different because Mr. Mendoza had a hard time explaining to his teacher about having unstable internet connection since his teacher is strict about it.

 

           Elgin Mandalupa’s Interview Experience:

    Elgin interviewed Mr. Kenneth Comayas and his problem is the same with other interviewees I have shared above. He is still struggling with the online learning setting. He is dealing with slow internet connection and the data he has is always not enough to sustain his online learning effectively.

    For the internet connectivity problem, our group came up with different ideas to solve this problem so we combined them all and see if it can be possible to make in reality. We thought to create an application where it can boost internet connectivity, can track the location where there is internet connection and can monitor the speed of the internet. Through this, students can be less worried because they will have an idea where to find a better internet connection and they could better explain themselves honestly to the teachers about their situation.

 

    Elgin also interviewed Mrs. Irish Mae Granido, a mother and also an online shopper. Her problem is about the quality assurance of buying online. When she buys something form shopee or lazada, some products were very different in reality compared to the displayed picture she saw online.

          My interview experience:

    Now for my interview experience, since the most common problem that my groupmates found out is about unstable internet connectivity, I thought to focus more on interviewing about other problems that people might have experienced since before.

    First I interviewed Ms. Laiana Kaye Jayoma a senior high school student residing at Surgarland subdivision Lumbo, Valencia City, Bukidnon. Her problem is difficulty in finding a transportation. Since she lived in a subdivision, it is always hard for their neighborhood to find transportation whenever they want to leave their house. And she said, her time will always come to waste just by waiting for an available vehicle to take and prepare very early for school because you can never guess when there will be a vehicle. Also whenever she want to go home and find vehicle to take from poblacion, she always need to offer extra payment just so the driver could let her ride.

Solution:

    So for this problem, we came up with a solution on making an application like grab or uber for motor relas or “habal-habal” so people can use it to book for a transportation whenever they need. And we thought that this may also help the drivers as well to have more income especially during this time of pandemic they might have smaller income than before because of the restrictions for public transport and there are fewer people going outside already.

 

    Secondly, I interviewed Mr. Gilbert Caindug through the help of my sister. I prepared questions to ask and I was communicating with him through a phone call. So as a self-employed father of two children and also takes care four more students at his home, he finds it very difficult sometimes to have time to buy groceries or pay the house bills before it dues. There are times that he could be really busy for his farm and because of the current situation, he could not let other person at his home do the groceries or do other errands because they are all still students and he don't want to risk their health as well. So with that, they sometimes choose to have food delivered to them instead or do online grocery shopping since some stores are offering that service nowadays but the thing is he cannot really buy all they need because the product choices were limited since you can only choose from that specific store only.

 

Solution: 

    For this problem, we thought of creating an application that allows people to hire a personal shopper that can go to whatever store or market they want, a person who can do errands for you like for paying bills or a delivery man like whenever you want to share homemade foods or anything to your friends you can hire a person who can deliver it for you as long as it is within the scope of the application’s offered location.

The process of deciding what problem to choose - Finding out the hypothesis and results found

    After our first week of conducting interviews, we chose to address the most common problem that our group have found which is the unstable internet connectivity of students for online classes with the same solution I have mentioned in the interview experience portion above. As we brainstormed and consider each other’s idea, we were all unsure if our solution can really be possible in reality and if this is the right solution that it needs. As one of my group mates Elgin have shared to us, she tried to ask our proposed solution to her friend who is an IT expert and said that this can be very complicated and there will be a lot of work to do to say that our proposed solution is possible. As we continue doing our interviews, we try to focus on other problems that people may have experienced nowadays. 

        After we conducted all our interviews, we had our consultation with Ma’am Conie Sudaria our teacher for this entrepreneurial mind subject. Since this activity is new for us, the consultation we had wakes us up and made us try to reconsider more factors before deciding our final problem to address.  

    And finally after considering Ma’am Conie’s opinion and after long discussions with my group mates, we decided to choose Mr. Gilbert Caindug’s problem which is the difficulty of doing groceries and difficulty in finding time for errands. As I have mentioned above already, the solution we thought of is to create an application that can let people hire someone who can do the tasks that some people cannot do because of busy schedule or any other reasons.   

        Our group also believe that through this application, we can help not just those who are busy because of work but it will also help senior citizens and students who were in charge of doing these things for their family before the pandemic has started. We also see this problem existing since before the pandemic occurred that is why we believe that this application can still be useful even after the pandemic.

        Of course even though we have finalised our decision already, we were still considering some factors and see if other people will find our proposed solution helpful. And so I tried to conduct a survey through chat to a student and asked opinion about our proposed solution. 

        Her name is Hiromi Juliet Sorongon, a senior high school student and she also do their groceries for her family before the pandemic began. She kindly response to our questions and said she find our proposed solution useful and consider using it especially with the “running errands” feature that we plan to include.

Lessons: The Beginning

        Overall, the beginning of our journey to entrepreneurial mind amidst the pandemic is quite difficult because doing all of these through online has a lot of limitations. Of course we are still in the process of adjusting to this new way of learning and so as the teachers that is why I do not have negative thoughts about it and just try overcome these difficulties. There are times that our communication within our group is not coordinated because some of my group mates do not have stable internet connection so when others share something important and some of my group mates cannot catch up I have to repeat explaining to them again. And I think through this way I also got to learn extending my patience more and try to help them as much as I can. As I am making myself a better leader, I also learned so much things form the online discussions. Before taking this subject I dreamed to become an entrepreneur and make big profit so I could use it to help other people but now that I got to listen the introduction about what really is having an entrepreneurial mind, I thought to myself this time that I want to be an entrepreneur that can help people through my product first and not to focus on earning in that way I can truly help people.  Moreover, understanding and respecting each other as a team brought us here to finish this part of our journey without conflict with so much realisations and experiences.