BDO Foundation: serving Filipinos in the time of the pandemic / BusinessWorld

The pandemic has become a yardstick for how organizations transformed into resilient and innovative enterprises for the communites they serve. BDO Foundation, the corporate social responsibility arm of BDO Unibank, for instance, found new opportunities to be of better service to a greater number of beneficiaries with its COVID-19 response projects. The foundation immediately implemented programs to control the spread of COVID-19, assist frontliners and help underserved sectors of society vulnerable to the effects of the health crisis. It launched a donation drive, provided food assistance to families in communities on lockdown, donated test kits to hospitals across the country and procured hygiene kits for stranded overseas Filipino workers (OFWs). Further, it supported government efforts to improve the mobility of frontliners during ECQ and accelerate the distribution of cash aid to beneficiaries of the Social Amelioration Program. In partnership with Go Negosyo, local government units and several groups of medical experts, BDO Foundation sponsored the pilot implementation of the pooled testing method in the cities of Makati, Mandaluyong and Cebu. Aimed at reducing costs, improving turnaround time and accommodating as many people as possible, the mass testing intervention covered not only the cities' frontliners and essential workers but also their public market vendors and public utility vehicle drivers. The results of the undertaking paved the way for the Department of Health's adoption of the pooled PCR testing method as one of its official testing approaches. On a biggers scale, the foundation partnered with Go Negosyo, the National Task Forced Against COVID-19, UK-based pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca and the private sector to purchase vaccines through an initiative dubbed A Dose of Hope. The project's first wave yielded an initial order of about 2.6 million vaccine doses for the Philippines. This increased to 17 million doses in the second wave, which was participated in by more private corporations and local government units that placed orders under the same model.

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