Message from the Chairman

Mabuhay!

Once again, it is my pleasure and privilege to report to the Members of the Board of Trustees of Pilipinas Shell Foundation, Inc. that during the past year, your Foundation was able to achieve most of our targets in terms of numbers of beneficiaries helped, out-of-school-youths trained, communities developed, and cost recoveries and grants received.

In fact, because of the number of projects which your Foundation succeeded in acquiring over the past year, the number of Foundation short-term staff jumped to over 90 professionals working in projects from as far north as the Cordillera Autonomous Region to as far south as Balabac municipality at the southernmost tip of Palawan Island.

In brief, from a total of 18,142 beneficiaries assisted by your Foundation by the year 2000, the number of our beneficiaries reached a high

364,811 by end-2003.

These could not have been achieved without the help of our Foundation's partners, both old ones and new. Most noteworthy of the new ones is the Shell Philippines Exploration B.V. (SPEX), Operator of the Malampaya Deep Water Gas to Power Project, a joint venture project of Shell, Chevron-Texaco and the Philippine National Oil Company-Exploration Corporation. The Malampaya Project fully utilised PSFI’s existing projects and funded new ones to account for much of the grants received by PSFI during the past year.

Pilipinas Shell Petroleum Corporation also doubled the Trust Fund of the Foundation last year, increasing our Seed Fund to P30 million.

The Department of Agrarian Reform and Children and Youth Foundation also remained steadfast partners in development throughout the past year.

We also saw the return of Pampanga Agricultural College (PAC) to the SAKA program. As you recall, the SAKA program was first developed and implemented in this campus. A new campus in Palawan, the State Polytechnic College of Palawan, has also set up the SAKA program, replicating the success we have experienced in both DSAC in Cavite and PAC in Pampanga.

Benguet State University also remained one of our steadfast partners and a new MOA extending our use of their facilities for the Shell Training Farm program will soon be signed.

As a result of these programs, the Foundation has achieved special recognition internationally as a pioneer in Sustainable Development in Action. Your Foundation was twice featured in the Shell Group Business TV, a live telecast report by the Chairman of the Royal Dutch Shell Group to all Shell Companies. Your Foundation also attracted visits from international delegations from South Africa, Norway, and Bangladesh.

The Foundation's projects were also featured prominently and gained much interest in exhibits held at the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston, Texas and the Annual General Stockholders Meeting of the Royal Dutch Shell Group of Companies this year.

The Shell Group has also nominated the Malampaya Project and SPEX/PSFI to the World Sustainable Development Awards which shall be announced during the World Sustainable Development Conference in Johannesburg, South Africa in September 2002. God willing, PSFI shall win this award also.

In view of all these, it is clear that the Foundation has developed into a highly specialised NGO with special skills in community development affected by largescale industrial projects. This special skill has bolstered our Regular Programs to such an extent that PSFI has effectively become self-sustainable. This was the target set by the Foundation in 1995, as I recall. I believe we achieved this in 2001.

In behalf of the Board of Trustees, therefore, allow me to extend our thanks to all the staff of PSFI for their continuing dedication and hard work that has allowed the Foundation to affect the lives positively of more than a hundred thousand of our unfortunate countrymen.

It is doubly meaningful that all these happened on the 20th year of Pilipinas Shell Foundation Inc. May we continue to build upon our success and help more people help themselves in the years to come.

CESAR A. BUENAVENTURA

Chairman