Nina Patawaran
Founder, Philippines Dictionary Project

Nina Patawaran is the founder of the Philippines Dictionary Project, a grass-roots movement launched in late 2008. The Project distributes child-friendly illustrated dictionaries to public elementary schools across the Philippines and is distinguished by the robust checks and balances that it incorporates. In a span of 9-months, 2,800 dictionaries have been distributed to 57 schools in two Philippine provinces.

Patawaran, the banker and derivatives structurer. Prior to embarking on the Project, Nina worked for over 15 years with JPMorgan Chase and Dresdner Kleinwort, primarily as a derivatives structurer. Her role was to design customized solutions when off-the-shelf derivatives products failed to meet her clients’ needs. Clients included corporations in Japan, the US and Latin America.

Patawaran, the children’s book collector. Nina started to collect children’s books in her late teens and has since dreamt of the day when all Filipino children can enjoy access to functional school libraries. To help one book-deprived public school get a headstart, in 2006, Nina donated over 160 brand-new, hardbound books to Sagrada Elementary School in Negros Oriental. A subsequent audit exposed that some of the books had gone missing, with no one able to provide a coherent explanation. This unhappy occasion turned out to be a blessing in disguise; it challenged Nina to find a solution to the age-old problem of donated books disappearing without trace after arriving at Philippine public schools. She set out to find a way to pull back donated books should a recipient school fail to care for and fully utilize these books.

Patawaran, the children’s book loan structurer. Tapping her banking experience, Nina identified that ownership of books can be bifurcated from access to books. Thus she came up with the idea of a book loan complete with standard audit procedures and covenants, no different from a financial loan. She approached Silliman University Elementary School (SUES), also in Negros Oriental, and requested them to act as her trustee/loan administrator; Nina would donate 120 books—fiction, dictionaries and other children’s reference materials—to SUES, specifically for SUES to lend to Sagrada. SUES was willing to accommodate the unusual request provided that there was a mechanism to fully protect the SUES books. Nina enlisted a 3rd party guarantor who agreed to pay for any missing or damaged books. In June 2007, SUES embarked on its first-ever book loan with a public school. Periodic audits were performed. The books were returned intact and in good condition in March 2008.

In June 2008, Sagrada’s School Principal informed Nina that Sagrada was willing to sacrifice all of the loaned fiction books in exchange for as many child-friendly entry-level English dictionaries as possible. Nina was also told that other elementary schools would be keen to access high quality, illustrated children’s dictionaries which are not readily available in the Philippines. Thus was born the idea for a nationwide book loan program focused on children’s dictionaries. Fund raising began in August 2008.
The Philippines Dictionary Project was officially launched in November 2008 with 1,400 dictionaries distributed to 28 schools from Negros Oriental in partnership with Silliman (as the local dictionary bank) and Congresswoman Jocelyn Sy Limkaichong (as the schools’ guarantor). After five months, children’s grades improved, with one school reporting that their Mean Percentage Score in English jumped by 26 percentage points. In August 2009, the Project grew to include 57 schools in two provinces. Donors from all walks of life continue to give what they can, sometimes one dictionary at a time, such that the Project will be rolled out to another province (if not two) in the near future.

Patawaran, the accidental CSR observer. In her quest to expand the Project, Nina has reached out to several corporate foundations and NGOs. Her efforts have led to collaborations with a number of them.

Nina earned her Bachelor of Economics degree from the University of Tokyo (as a Japanese Government Monbugakusho Undergraduate Scholar) and her MBA from INSEAD. In addition to English and Filipino, she has learned Japanese, Spanish and French.