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E28: “Let’s Play” - you just never know what kind of ripples you're going to create
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“If you want to help a community, then by far educations is the best way to do it. I don't know if it matters so much what you teach, but as long as kids get excited about learning and get excited about going to school, that makes a huge difference.”
“Just by talking about it and it inspires other people to do something similar in their communities, you just never know what kind of ripples you're going to create, right?”
“Once you don't think so much about yourself and once you don't think about what you're getting out of it, especially maybe financially, and you just do something for other people, then a lot of things just become maybe a little bit clearer in terms of what needs to get done.”
“I didn't know what I was expecting, but for some reason I was a little bit surprised that those kids are just the same and they just happened to have been born somewhere else. If you look at people on TV you don't always realize how similar we all are, really.”
“I have this amount that I'm quite happy to give anyone who has a worthy cause. For me, it's more like a message to the people who are asking to say “Look, I support you, I'm behind you in this and I'm with you.” So I hope that many people will be with you because it's a great cause.”
“Music is a strange animal 'cause you can't touch it, you can't smell it, you can't eat it or anything else, and it's just there. Beethoven's Fifth just keeps coming back at you for 300 years, and that's very, very powerful, spiritual energy.” [Quincy Jones]
“The collective power of artists can be very impacting. If we all put our egos aside in the service of people in the world who are less fortunate. We're truly all one people. We are all in need of each other.” [Harry Belafonte]
“I think every individual in the world wants to contribute, and they don't know how. I got a feeling that we're creating a shift in what's going on in the world today, about helping other people. It's compassion. It's real new.” [Diana Ross]
“The ripple effect that "We Are the World" had was that everyone wanted to try and do it. And artists suddenly realized that they could now make a change in the world. It's one of those things that kids who haven't even been born yet will know about because it was a unity through music.” [Steven Ivory, Music journalist]
“We believe that artists have a valuable function in any society, since it is the artists who reveal the society to itself.” [Harry Belafonte]
“"We Are the World" was something that everybody could understand. Even if you didn't speak English, you could understand the melody. You could understand the feeling of the song musically.”[Steven Ivory, Music journalist]
Rondalla ensemble includes: guitar, bass, octavina, laud, banduria played together.
Ukulele
03D Gift page (for INSEAD Giving Day 2024 and beyond)
To make your donation just click here for the MBA'03D Diversity Scholarship.
https://forceforgood.insead.edu/class-giving/mba03d-endowed-scholarship
"Let's Play" fund raising page
https://give.asia/campaign/support-music-education-for-children-in-philippines#/
“Let’s Play” on Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/lets.play.malabon.ph?mibextid=ZbWKwL
Instagram: letsplayasia
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Transcript
Return of the Republic of Insead
00:00:00
Speaker
This is Republic of Insead, now in its new Beyond 20 Years Later O3D podcast edition. I am still Mila Naidvanova and will continue to be your host for as long as we're all having fun with it.
00:00:15
Speaker
We are now well beyond our 20-year reunion. Hopefully, still all the wiser, naturally smarter and as charming as ever. And as many of you have been asking for a continuation, here we go again. There should always be time for a good story to share among us, the 432 unique and inspiring individuals in this special O3D vintage of ours. Welcome to the Republic of Insead Podcast Division and enjoy the show.
00:00:47
Speaker
all right surprise surprise we are back again hello everybody uh for those of you who have missed the joy of the airwaves we shared together we are back 26 episodes of what was meant to be a limited series edition later i simply could not help myself as i feel the need to keep the conversation going
00:01:09
Speaker
I know I'm not the only one to feel this way, so hopefully this episode comes as a nice surprise to many. And indeed, this show ain't over yet.
Guest Introduction and Life Journey
00:01:20
Speaker
My guest today is a dear, dear friend. We know each other from that freezing cold January day in the forest of Fontainebleau of Outwards Bound pain back in 2003.
00:01:33
Speaker
share the team for two periods and then many a party and happy occasions during the school year and the decades that followed. And as tradition would have it by now, let's start with his Republic of Insead yearbook entry. Some still wonder whether he confused the application process and instead of the Juilliard School of Music ended up at Insead by mistake.
00:02:02
Speaker
One way or the other, he made sure we all stayed entertained in good times and bad. Think P1, great distribution.
00:02:12
Speaker
Not only he played the guitar in Funk and Blow, his talents spill over to the piano and, boy, can that man sing. By the way, his promise to provide us with three backstage tickets to his first concert at Wimbledon. So watch out. And if you didn't know that before, be warned that he was Denmark's junior ping pong champion.
00:02:37
Speaker
Maybe his passion for data manipulation and CRM has something to do with his childhood passion. He is a great buddy one can count on for anything, including last minute tutorials on queuing theory. The son of a Danish father and a Japanese mother, this exotic combination guarantees there's always something new about him. You would be surprised to find out. Oh, yeah.
00:03:05
Speaker
The next time you see him, ask about the source of his frequent trips to Bristol. End of quotation. What's the Bristol thing about? That was where my girlfriend used to live. Yeah, I have completely forgotten that. That's an amazing story.
00:03:24
Speaker
Ha, there you go. Well, welcome to the show. It is my great pleasure to say hello, especially to you. This one has been, this conversation has been in the making for a while, but it took us a while. And then I did get the inspiration to finally nail how we are going to go about it, but you all find out about it soon. So where do I find you? Where are you these days? I am living in Singapore at the moment with my
00:03:54
Speaker
with my wife who is not my girlfriend from Bristol. Okay. Yeah, but another wonderful girl that I met and we had two kids together and been down living in Singapore. And so where should we start? Let's do a very quick, because I have a very exciting conversation that we've cooked up with you.
00:04:16
Speaker
But let's do the quick five minutes, seven minutes, elevator picture, where life has taken you since you ended up at INSEAD by mistake, but music, music. Yeah, OK. So I haven't been to INSEAD. So I'm still waiting for that invitation. Yeah, you might have to wait a little bit longer.
00:04:41
Speaker
That sounds promising. So after INSEAP, I moved to London and I was there for three or four years, during which time, you know, I broke up with my girlfriend from Bristol and I met another girl who then later became my wife.
00:04:58
Speaker
And after three or four years in London, we moved to Singapore and we're still here. So in the meantime, we've had two kids, two boys, 10 and 12 years old now. They're just amazing, just like any other parents think their kids are. And recently we have a dog. So we got a dog six months ago, super cute and just a great addition to the family.
00:05:29
Speaker
It's a kavapoo. Her name is Sydney, like the city. And she's super friendly and just great to have around, great for the kids. Work-wise, I work for one of the local banks here in Singapore. I manage their data analytics team. And I've been there for a while, like 15, 16 years in the same bank, different roles.
Balancing Work and Personal Life
00:05:58
Speaker
It kind of ticks a lot of the boxes for me. It's a local bank, so I don't do much travel. So I pretty much see my kids every day. And I think that the work's interesting. I work with people that I like. And because it's sort of stable, it allows me to do other things out at work, which I think we're going to talk about later. Yeah.
00:06:28
Speaker
What has been, let's see, what has been the biggest challenge or challenges for you in these 20 years, personal, professional, whatever it is that. Yeah, I think one thing is, I guess my biggest challenge is probably just finding a balance between, you know, work and family and kids and friends and trying to make enough time for everybody.
00:06:57
Speaker
I think just with kids always run out of time, but it's hard sometimes to fit everything in. So I think that's sort of my key challenge, but I try to not go too much in one direction and try to have enough time for everybody. And stress and health-wise, where are you in terms of managing this? Or just as relaxed as always?
00:07:25
Speaker
he was always the most relaxed person around. At least the impression was created. Yeah, I think I'm okay stress and health wise. I try to, like I think I live a much more healthy lifestyle now than I did back then. Like I try to exercise most days. I don't drink too much, hardly anymore. I eat pretty well. I try to get some good sleep. You know, all the things that, you know,
00:07:55
Speaker
that they say that we should do. And it kind of works. I feel okay most days. If I need to kind of, you know, get things out of my system, then I play music still. It kind
Music at INSEAD and Beyond
00:08:14
Speaker
of helps me. A few years ago I took up drumming. And drumming is like so much fun. And you don't even have to be good at it. But just being able to just, you know,
00:08:26
Speaker
pout out your anger. It is just so good and I have like this electric drum kit and I can just put on a song and put on the headphones and no one gets bothered and I get stuff out of my system. So that's one thing that I can highly recommend. Drumming people.
00:08:50
Speaker
My dog agrees. Yeah, good. Strongly agrees. Yeah, strongly agrees. Three times. All right, so we still haven't announced officially who the guest is, but probably his profile gives it away. As you heard from his profile, he was the guitar in Funkin' Blow.
00:09:13
Speaker
So, you didn't get into the Juilliard School of Music and therefore you became the guitar lead of the band during our year. Do you miss it sometimes? You said you are drumming now, but did you ever get back into a band?
00:09:35
Speaker
Now, I didn't get into another band. Funko Blue was my last band, but I miss it a lot. I think that when I think back of that year, to be honest, just playing in that band was one of the highlights. During Welcome Week, I met all the clubs, and I remember going to the band section, and I thought this was just the coolest thing.
00:10:04
Speaker
that people from the past have this band and every six months, half the band kind of rotates out and you go and recruit new members and you leave behind whatever equipment you have, like an amplifier or a microphone stand and over time, over time you get simple enough to have like a proper band equipment. And even in those six months,
00:10:33
Speaker
despite you being so busy with studies and meeting people, you still find time to rehearse and learn a couple of songs so you can play at parties. I think the whole idea is just, I thought it was just the coolest thing. So I think for me, Frog and Glue was like one of the highlights of that year for sure. And not just
00:10:56
Speaker
Not just like the performing at the parties and all that stuff. It's like the practicing. Once a week or twice a week, you go to this farmhouse in the middle of the forest, and then we just play songs. And during that time, you just forget about everything else. It's just you and your friends and playing music that you like. It's just that's the best.
00:11:26
Speaker
So what did you take away from it then? I don't know, like the memories and the feeling, which I think later inspired me to do something about music and try and give other the same pleasure.
Charity Project in the Philippines
00:11:42
Speaker
I tell you what, music, as a figure, today's conversation is not what you may have gotten used to with the previous 26 episodes because my interest so far was always to dissect an industry or dissect somebody's professional experience. But with this guest today, I want to take things in a totally different direction. So we are gonna talk about your extracurricular activities.
00:12:09
Speaker
So I'm absolutely not following the framework that you may have gotten used to over time. And the background here is this. I wanted to have this conversation with you for a while. And as I already mentioned, we've been yah, yah, yah, we are going to do it. But I hadn't quite found the way I want to go about it until I watched
00:12:39
Speaker
a documentary on Netflix shamelessly, not product plugging, but it's worth it. So I watched this documentary called The Greatest Night in Pop.
00:12:52
Speaker
which after I watched it I knew what I'm gonna talk with you about and I wrote your message and I was so excited. Hey you should see that documentary and now I know how we are gonna have this conversation. What the film is about is how the song We Are The World came into existence and a very very inspiring story and I
00:13:14
Speaker
I've now seen it four times for professional reasons as well. I recommend everyone watch it because I do think other things aside, there are a bunch of lessons in leadership in there baked in there as well. But we are the world. We are the world. You and I were in Lezartiste both when we were the newcomers and then we did it on others. And remember how we
00:13:39
Speaker
We were at the end of our session in Los Atis when we were the old ones. We all held hands and were like, we are the world, we are the people. I wanted to play the song in this recording and I asked my husband, who's a film producer, can I do that? And he's like, well, they'll probably mute you because you haven't heard the rights for the song. So I figured at the end we can sing it together.
00:14:07
Speaker
and have everyone else from the artist hold hands virtually in this figure and go back there to September 2003 where we got a bunch of rookies draw paint Ricky's torso
00:14:22
Speaker
and then we all sang together we are the world but anyhow it was quite exciting back then and then i really really enjoyed the documentary and there were a bunch of lessons in there for me that i thought we can shape our conversation around where where i want to take this is for you to tell us about your
00:14:47
Speaker
ongoing charitable project work in the Philippines and and how how how how what what what are you doing how did you start where it is now so i let you speak but yes it is about the other world okay yeah um so i've played music pretty much all my life like i think that uh i asked my parents you know how it all started
00:15:16
Speaker
And they said that one day I just came home from school and asked if I could play the recorder, take classes. And since then, I've always wanted to do it and they've been supportive, but it wasn't something that they sort of pushed or encouraged. And along the way, I just kept playing different instruments and learned different instruments and just kind of played just for fun. But I've always sort of had that motivation to just wanting to play myself. So,
00:15:47
Speaker
My wife is, she's half Filipino and her parents live in the Philippines. So we used to go there all the time. And when you go there, you're really struck by, you know, how many kids there are and how poor they all are. But also just in general, how musically talented people are in the Philippines. Like whenever you see a live band here or, you know, I guess anywhere in the world, there's a good chance that, you know, there's some Filipinos in there. I mean, they just,
00:16:17
Speaker
They just have something where they, they sing in the dance at home and it just, it's just in there. So, um, I'm, I'm there on a trip. I remember being on a trip and thinking about their situation and how privileged that I am and that I've been. And like, I don't know how to, I don't know how to put it, but like, despite me going to like, live with the best school, the highlight for me was just playing music with my friends. Right. So.
00:16:47
Speaker
What if I could identify a group of kids in the Philippines who were talented and motivated, and if they could have access to instruments just like I did at INSEAD, would they get the same kind of joy out of playing together? So that is sort of the original thought that I kept coming back to.
00:17:10
Speaker
And I could not think of a reason why they would not get the same amount of joy that I did. If, of course, they were motivated and wanted to play. So I just thought it can't be that hard to at least try it out. But I didn't know how to start. So I did a lot of research.
00:17:31
Speaker
And I read about, you know, there's a program in Venezuela called El Sistema and there's some kind of kids music club in Chicago and there's a kids choir in Africa and music educators in the Philippines that I talked to. And I just wanted to understand how do they run their programs and what are the challenges they have and how does it benefit the kids and all these kinds of things. Like I have no doubt about the benefit of music education to kids.
00:18:00
Speaker
I don't need to be convinced about it. But I needed to understand what are the challenges in actually running these sorts of operations. After learning about those things and thinking about it for a while, I knew that whatever I did had to be extremely efficient. I could not afford to have any costs that I didn't need. So I decided that I need to make sure that whatever money I can collect, it will have to go towards buying
00:18:30
Speaker
music instruments. And I thought about all kinds of options like should I start a school, like do you rent a building and do you find teachers and all these kind of things. At the end of the day, I thought that over time it'll just become difficult to manage, especially if I'm not... So in the end, I started leaning towards maybe working with existing schools. So finding schools that already had, of course,
00:19:00
Speaker
teachers and children and move over their head and see like if the kids are already there in school I kind of work together with the school to give them education in music but even if you have that idea it's very difficult just to walk into a school in the Philippines and pitch your idea and then one day we went for dinner at a friend's house here in Singapore
00:19:25
Speaker
and the friend is from the Philippines and her brother was in town and the brother is a mayor of one of the towns in the Philippines. So my wife said, why didn't you tell him about your idea? I see what they say. So I told him about the idea and he said, great, let's try it. I'll get you in touch with the school and then you can
00:19:47
Speaker
You can do a little experiment. And I got in touch with the school. And like a few months later on our next visit, we went to see the school and meet the teacher and meet the principal. And I explained the concept that essentially I want to try and give kids the chance to learn how to play music. And if the school can provide a teacher to run the program, then I want to give them the instruments. And they were of course very happy to do it.
Growth and Challenges of the Charity
00:20:15
Speaker
It's a school that actually is
00:20:16
Speaker
sadly had a music program but they had no instruments so you had kids taking a music course without playing music at all just learning a theory and so on my next visit i went to the mall and i bought 10 guitars and i also gave my old laptop with a lot of like guitar tutorials downloaded on it
00:20:38
Speaker
And then I dropped it off at the school and left it with a teacher. And I said to take videos of them practicing and, you know, help them practice daily if they could. And then I'll come back again two or three months later. And two or three months later, I came back and they were able to play songs and they learned a lot, but most importantly,
00:21:08
Speaker
They just loved it. You know, if they would come to school early to practice, they would stay behind for hours and just play together. And I think that's sort of when you realize actually maybe there's something here, right? It seems like this is something that is a bit special. So I took the footage from the teacher, crafted a little video about it, and then I went to work to share it with friends and family as they looked
00:21:38
Speaker
I want to try and do this. And enough people chipped in that I could take it to another couple of schools. Some of my friends who own an outsourcing company in the Philippines, they were looking for a CSR.
00:21:51
Speaker
to support and they love the idea. And they said, you know, how can we help? So they help me with some of the bookkeeping. They do a lot of sort of the logistics on the ground. If we need to send something from one place in the Philippines to another, then they will help with that, which is like super helpful for me because doing everything remotely can be a little bit challenging. But just having someone that you trust there on the ground, it really makes a big difference. So that's really how I'll start.
00:22:19
Speaker
And then it just grew slowly. Every couple of months I would have another school. I would work with the mayor's office to try and identify which schools to participate in.
00:22:30
Speaker
And in the beginning it's sort of easier because I can communicate with all the teachers directly. But then we got to maybe 10 or 12 schools in that town and then it gets a little bit harder to manage because sometimes people don't reply and I don't have time to manage the 12 teachers and stuff. And then there was a change in mayor and then I lost my contact there. And it kind of, I realized that in order to really scale, I need to have a little bit
00:22:58
Speaker
more organization, a little bit better structure in the way that I run this. At that point I was introduced to someone from the Department of Education in Cebu and they heard about the program and they were keen to also participate and then I flew there to visit them
00:23:18
Speaker
I met the rep from the department of education and I met three or four teachers and they were so good like the teachers like they were just really talented musicians and I thought if I have such good teachers here and a rep from you know the department of education who is willing to really run this and manage this
00:23:42
Speaker
Maybe this can scale here, right? So from then on, I just doubled down in Cebu and the region in Cebu. And they're just amazing. The schools there are so good. And we are now in, I think we're in 71 schools in total of which 50 are in Cebu. They're just really, really good there.
00:24:08
Speaker
How many years did you start when it started? Yeah, so I started in 2017, so like seven years ago. And throughout those seven years, like we've gone through COVID, right? So during the pandemic, all the schools closed. Horrible typhoon in Cebu that just
00:24:28
Speaker
destroyed a lot of schools and a lot of homes. So we've gone through a fair share of challenges throughout the years, but, you know, something like these, these guys, they just, they're so resilient and they just come back every time, you know, a setback and they just dust themselves off and you come back. So it's really amazing. So inspiring. And so in terms of impact, I'd call you basically, it sounds like you're, uh,
00:24:58
Speaker
philanthropic concept or something like that right here in this little startup situation that over time becomes like scales. You found a way to scale it and scale it so that you are not losing any money on the way. But in terms of fundraising, how much money have you raised over time? How did you go about it? What's been easy? What's been difficult?
00:25:26
Speaker
Yeah, I think I've raised maybe $100,000 to $120,000 so far. We've bought more than 1,300 instruments for the schools. All the instruments that we buy, we buy from local guitar makers in Cebu. So Cebu is kind of famous for making guitars. They've done it for a long time. And a lot of these craftsmen have done it throughout generations. And I kind of like the idea that, you know,
00:25:55
Speaker
I buy from them and kind of help the ecosystem in Sipu. So I collect money and I give it to the local guitar makers and then they give it to the local schools.
00:26:08
Speaker
And then the kids play and impress people who pay me money. And then the cycle keeps on going, right? Uh, so yeah, like a hundred percent of the fun to erase go to instruments. Any other running cost I cover myself. So, uh, it forces me to be extremely lean, right? Like I have a website that I built myself and it's not very pretty, but it is still a website.
00:26:37
Speaker
There are very, very little admin costs. I don't pay anyone a salary. I don't pay rent anywhere. And it's important for me because it means that if for some reason if I stop it one day, or if I can't continue, then nothing stops on the ground. Whatever we've given, they'll keep. And they can continue as long as they want. So if I stop one day, it just means I can't add more schools.
00:27:06
Speaker
I can't add more instruments to an existing school, but I don't take anything away that I've started. And if I can raise more money, then I can add more schools and I can experiment more regions or I can do other things that I think will make an impact. So the idea of having no running cost was very important to me. And I think that really, like, especially if you're in COVID,
00:27:31
Speaker
You know, I could just not do anything for 12 months and nothing would happen. It would have no negative impact on the project. But as it happened, we actually doubled down during COVID because the guitar makers were really suffering. You know, there were no tourism, so they were just, they were all going bankrupt.
00:27:52
Speaker
and all the kids were stuck at home. So we actually bought a lot of instruments during COVID to keep the guitar makers busy and to allow the kids to play and practice at home. And the teachers would go around to the student's home and help them out. So, but my motto means that I have the flexibility to do those kinds of things, right? So music, maybe it's the right time to, and because you talk about the kids
00:28:22
Speaker
and the inspiration or the motivation for them to want to come to school early, which is always a big accomplishment. Yeah, it's crazy, right? Right? Maybe it's the right time to quote Quincy Jones out of this documentary I keep talking about. But what he says about music there is, music is a strange animal because you can't touch it, you can't smell it, you can't eat it or anything else, and it's just there.
00:28:52
Speaker
Beethoven's fifth just keeps coming back at you for 300 years. And that's very, very powerful spiritual energy. So end of quotation marks. What have you seen music do for these communities and for these children? What is your, in terms of impact, what has been the positive reinforcement that keeps you wanting to do more? Yeah. So.
00:29:16
Speaker
I hear a lot of stories on the ground when I visit, I hear stories from the teachers and from the parents. There's one school in Cebu, so I was maybe in 10 schools in Cebu at that point. And then this teacher, he writes me on Facebook and he said, I heard about your project. Can I join? I'm a teacher in this school like two hours away from Cebu City.
00:29:40
Speaker
So I text my contact at the Department of Education and I asked like, you know, who's this guy? Is he legit? And then she says, yeah, he should be okay. So I said, okay, let's give him some instruments and let's see what he can do. And this place is called Toledo. It's like so far away from anything else. Like it's really just out in the country. And he got like, we normally start by giving them eucalyptus. They got like 15 eucalyptus.
00:30:09
Speaker
And then he would start practicing with these kids. And in the beginning, they were just not very good. But they just kept on practicing. And they kept sending me videos. And they kept saying, you guys are great. And they just got better and better and better. And like last year, we went to Cebu with the family and we drove there to Toledo.
00:30:33
Speaker
So it's like two hours drive from Cebu City. And it's just far away from everything else. And the road stops and it becomes a dirt road. And then you stop and then you have to get out and walk over a bridge over a river. And then they're like in the middle of literally nowhere, surrounded by these green hills. There's this school with like dogs and chickens running around. And in this school,
00:31:03
Speaker
there are 50 kids just playing just really beautiful music on the ukulele. It's just unreal. And the parents talk with so much pride and they perform for the mayor and the mayor loves it and it's like the pride and joy of the community. And I think that's really meaningful for them. So many of these kids are somebody.
00:31:31
Speaker
in that community. And they're just super motivated and do things and learn things. And I think that's a great thing about music. It can really bring people together and feel some kind of sense of achievement. And then you told me something in the preliminary conversation that maybe now is the time to share with the big magic you are working towards in June, which got me quite excited.
Guinness World Record Attempt
00:32:01
Speaker
What's happening now? What are you working on? Yeah, in June, we're going to try and set a Guinness World Record in Cebu. So I think it was like a year and a half ago. How did that go? A year and a half ago, I think for Christmas in 22 or something like that, my kids got the Guinness Book of Records. And I was really just looking through it. I was like, hmm.
00:32:29
Speaker
be kind of fun to set a world record and I was like if it's fun for me imagine how much fun it would be for the kids in the Philippines if they could make it to this book. So I thought maybe we can get into maybe we can set a record for you know the largest group of people playing the ukulele the most kids playing the ukulele. So I wrote to Guinness
00:32:53
Speaker
And I asked if you could set that record. And they said they don't have like age limits for certain records, right? So I could go for the general, you know, biggest group of people playing the jucalilla, which was like 8,000 or 10,000 or something like that, which, you know, we far away from those kind of numbers.
00:33:14
Speaker
But then I thought I've also donated other instruments to the schools in Cebu, instruments that are quite unique to the Philippines. And they're called Rondalia instruments. And they kind of look like guitars. They just shape a bit differently. Some of them have more strings. You play them with a pick and you play them sort of in a small group, maybe eight to 10 usually.
00:33:40
Speaker
It originated from Spain, but they also played in the States, I think, but it's very popular in the Philippines. So I asked Guinness if there was a record for the largest Rondale group, and they came back and said no, but they could research it if it was possible to set a record like that. So then they came back to me and said, actually, it is a real thing, and they could create a record if they wanted to go for it.
00:34:06
Speaker
So I said, yes, of course. So I need to gather at least 250 people to play a song together as a group. And I think you're going to have 500 or 600 people will easily get that number. So yeah, the last weekend of June, like kids from all over Cebu will gather in the in the city's, you know, sports complex and
00:34:35
Speaker
and do performance that hopefully will land in the Guinness Book of Records. Amazing, amazing story. We are rooting for you. And then who knows, maybe you'd be the first in Seattle alum to get into the Guinness Record. I don't know, we should check this out. I'm sure that others, but it's still fun. I think it's fun and I can imagine like,
00:35:01
Speaker
you know, what these kids and what their families would think about it, you know. So you will be there in June, right? I'll be there. I'll be there with my family. Can you like take a video record for us and report live? Yeah, of course. Please. Of course. I'll do a live stream. Amazing. I love that. I love that.
00:35:25
Speaker
I mean, among the many reasons why this particular story with you, what you're doing in the Philippines, why I love it, is because the fact that what you do actually is at the crossroads of education and music, and music has this power to inspire and tie people together, and it's 20 years later, I still remember singing, and you got dinged.
00:35:59
Speaker
But then it brings emotion. So it's music and then it's scent and smell, by the way. It's another one of these senses that we react to very instantly and brings emotions. But bottom line is all the work that I do, volunteer work and charity work links to education.
00:36:24
Speaker
And it is because that's the only way we can have progress in society. So anything to help develop and what you are doing there with music is absolutely for any society unless we get education at all levels. And it starts at the
00:36:43
Speaker
at the primary, it starts at a very early age. There's no progress, right? And the world devolves into something unpleasant. So I'm really, really grateful for what you do. And I love the story. So I'm waiting for the June live reporting. But maybe that's also where I can add another quote from that film, where Diana Ross says, what she says is,
00:37:10
Speaker
I think every individual in the world wants to contribute and they don't know how.
Impact of Education and Music
00:37:16
Speaker
I got a feeling that we are creating a shift in what's going on in the world today about helping other people. It's compassion, it's really new. That's what Diana Rose says about the We Are The World project, which basically happens in one night in terms of the recording. And so you personally know how you found your way
00:37:40
Speaker
And you've been contributing. And what's amazing about doing this through music is, again, the magical power that this invisible force has. So tell me, in terms of any help that you can make use of, is there anything we can do apart from inspiring others to do similar things elsewhere in the world? But what would you say to that?
00:38:06
Speaker
400 people listening to this very tailored and targeted podcast that serves an audience of 400. Yeah, I think, I mean, first of all, I totally agree. I think that, you know, if you want to help the community, then by far education is the best way to do it. You know, and I think that I don't know if it matters so much what you teach, but as long as kids sort of
00:38:36
Speaker
learn how to learn and get excited about learning and get excited about going to school, I think that makes a huge difference. And music is not the answer for everybody. I don't think that everyone will react the same way if they get access to instruments, but it's the answer for some.
00:38:59
Speaker
you know, if I'm able to help to find the kids who are motivated and talented and have supportive parents and all these kind of things, and if it can really make a difference for them, then I think that's a great solution for them. But other kids, they might need other things to get them excited, right? But in terms of help, I mean,
00:39:23
Speaker
I always need more money to buy more instruments. So fundraising is definitely something that I'm looking at. I have a fundraising page. I don't really do fundraising that actively because I find it very tiring, to be honest with you. Tell me about it. I'm consuming, I can tell you this.
00:39:51
Speaker
And I find it hard to go back to the same people over and over again. And so I try not to do it unless I have to. And I always thought that if I focus on just running the program well, and if it really works, someone will support. We are going to put a link to it.
00:40:17
Speaker
We are going to put a link to your page in the notes. So if anyone listening is interested, we'll have the link in the notes below the podcast episode. So yeah. Here's another quote from...
00:40:39
Speaker
I think that money is definitely one thing, but also just spreading the word, just telling the story to other people. You never know what's going to come from it. There are people that I talked to about this many years ago
00:40:57
Speaker
And they come to me suddenly out of the blue and say, look, I work for a company and we're looking for a project to sponsor or whatever. You just never know when people are ready to give or when then opportunity will come up. So I think just by talking about it, and it doesn't even have to be my project. Just if you talk about it, it inspires other people to do something similar in their communities. You just never know what kind of ripples you're going to create.
00:41:27
Speaker
I think just talking about it helps a lot, to be honest. I like it. Ripples, ripples. We are going to get to ripples in a second as well. But here's another quote from Belafonte this time. The collective power of artists can be very impacting if we all put our egos aside in the service of people in the world who are less fortunate. We are truly all one people. We are all in need of each other.
00:41:56
Speaker
He speaks about artists, but if you substitute the word artists with leaders or people, let's say, it should still hold true. I love this inspiration and what to say to everyone listening that what I want to tell you is think of our collective power, us as our class, us as our friends, and what we have achieved so far together.
00:42:23
Speaker
and what more we can aim to achieve going forward. And then to this ripple effect, which you mentioned,
00:42:31
Speaker
in the film Ivory says, the ripple effect that we are the world has had was that everyone wanted to try and do
Ripple Effect of Charity
00:42:41
Speaker
it. And artists suddenly realized that they could now make a change in the world. It's one of those things that kids who haven't even been born yet will know about because it was a unity through music. And that's what you're talking about, right? So it's, hey,
00:42:58
Speaker
Our conversation inspires someone at the other end of the world to do the same or do a non-music related, but whatever their gift is related to, to, to get kids. And actually we have one of those, right? Because there's Yuri building a school in Kenya and he's been very shy. He's been very shy. I asked him if he wants to talk about it and he was very shy. So I'm still working on this, but.
00:43:29
Speaker
I'm sure there are plenty more stories among us, among the 435 of us in our class. And if anyone wants to share to get in touch, I love hearing these stories. And then last year, we did create a bunch of ripples with the podcast, actually, because it started with, I always joke. And you are from marketing, so you tell me, do you ever target 435 people?
00:43:58
Speaker
for a product. Because that's what we've done with this podcast, right? Yeah. 435, as luxurious as it gets, right? The ultimate marketing part of it. Yeah, that's brilliant. The episodes have been listened to more than 8,000 times now. So that's cool. You know, it's something like 135 people per episode.
00:44:24
Speaker
And it has inspired people in more than one way. There are now other INSEAD podcasts happening from alumni. So the UK has one. Anyone who wants to hear UK stories, please tune in there. It's on Spotify. And then in terms of ripples, our endowed fund keeps growing. You said you hate fundraising.
00:44:51
Speaker
I don't know. I don't have. In fact, I love it because by now, because I've been doing it for so long, it's 20 years. It's just like, yeah, no one gets upset with me talking about it. They actually thanked me. So that's the joy of it. Yeah. I think I would probably love it if I was as good at it as you are. Well, I wasn't good. I was just stubborn. That's a feature of mine. Right. But, um,
00:45:15
Speaker
The cool thing is that there we now have over 1.2 million in our doubt scholarship.
INSEAD's Giving Day and Music's Unifying Power
00:45:21
Speaker
Yeah, that's seriously amazing. That's super, super cool. And then it becomes a self-reinforcing mechanism where you get the positive boost from the good news and you want to do more.
00:45:40
Speaker
That's one other way of thinking about triple. So I say this, let's keep music as an inspiration and keep finding new ways to make a difference in the world. So that's why I love your story so much. And then what I will say last, and then I'll let you close it, is
00:46:01
Speaker
This episode will be airing just before the start of Giving Day 2024 for INSEAD. So INSEAD now has turned this into a tradition. It started in 2017 and it's been going every year since. Giving Day will be on March 21st, but all gifts between the 14th and the 21st will count towards the campaign.
00:46:25
Speaker
My personal ask for all of you listening to this is, if you have a multi-year pledge last year with it, we had a very successful reunion. And so a bunch of us have done multi-year pledges. But if you are one of those, please consider giving during Giving Day. If not, I'll chase you later in the year. But let me tell you this.
00:46:47
Speaker
It makes my life and the life of the other fundraisers, so Jeff Clay, Ruth Gerst, Sophie Lara, much, much easier. You save us time and we don't have free time. It's always, I take time away from my family to do this, others take time away from their work, so please be kind to us and make our lives easier.
00:47:13
Speaker
If you have not made pledge or have not made gifts until now, please consider joining us and to become part of the ripples that we are slowly but surely making in the world, at least in the inside world. And as I said, education is very dear to my heart. And coming from a country like Bulgaria, I can tell you education at all levels counts. We need to first make sure people can read and write.
00:47:40
Speaker
But then we need to make sure we also have quality leaders on top because otherwise it very quickly becomes a really unpleasant situation to be dealing with on a country level and then on world level crying out loud these days.
00:47:58
Speaker
And so, um, I'll stop here with my plugins, product placement. So what do you want to say to everyone listening as a final? So we'll put the, we'll put your site in the notes and what else do you want to say? Um, and maybe at the end we are going to sing. Yeah. Okay. Like I think that.
00:48:21
Speaker
I think the quote is really quite insightful that you mentioned earlier, something about when artists come together and put their egos aside and stuff like that. I think that once you don't think so much about yourself and once you don't think about what you're getting out of it, especially maybe financially, and you just do something for other people, then a lot of things just become a little bit clearer in terms of what needs to get done.
00:48:51
Speaker
I think the other thing that really struck me in that quote, and I can't read, what was the quote again? Something about, we all want people, we all want something along those lines. So we are truly all one people, we are all in need of each other. Yeah, so one thing that kind of surprised me, I hate to say,
00:49:20
Speaker
when I met all these kids and their families and their parents, is that they're just like us. I didn't know what I was expecting, but for some reason I was a little bit surprised that those kids are as funny and curious and well groomed and articulate as my kids and my kids' friends. And the parents,
00:49:50
Speaker
are as concerned as I am about how the kids will grow up and what the world will look like in 20 years time, et cetera. It's like exactly the same. They're not like a group of helpless third world country underdeveloped people. They're just the same. And they just happen to have been born somewhere else. But the talent and the motivation
00:50:22
Speaker
It's just exactly the same. And it's something that I think that if you look at people like that on TV, you don't always realize that, you know, how similar we all are really. And it's just by luck that I was born in a place where there was resources and, you know, available that I could learn the things that I wanted to learn.
00:50:48
Speaker
But you put yourself in the shoes of the parents who can see that their child is gifted or have a talent and you don't have the means to kind of develop it. And for them, for someone to come along and try and help your kid, you know, develop their talents, I think, I can see why it means a lot to those parents.
00:51:17
Speaker
Like whenever my kids have, you know, some kind of performance at school, you know, the auditorium is full of people and parents that are bursting with pride, right? And looking at their kids on the stage doing whatever, a song or a dance. And I just imagine what it's like for those parents to see their kids.
00:51:41
Speaker
who suddenly now have a stage where they can perform and be someone in their community. And yeah, it's just, I don't know, it motivates me a lot just to find, you know, the next kid or the next school to try and help, you know. And imagine some of these parents when their kids get into the Guinness World Record. Wow.
00:52:03
Speaker
yeah i think like i think they're i think they're gonna go crazy but i'll find out in a few months time
00:52:13
Speaker
We are rooting for you. We are rooting for you. And now I can say this was a conversation with Kasper Hansen. And thank you so very much for your time, Kasper. And thank you for what you do, what you do, what I do, what we do. It is all part of the oneness that we so often forget about. Each and every one in the world is part of. In times like the ones we live in now, especially we should be reminded of this more often, I believe.
Gratitude and Human Aspirations
00:52:40
Speaker
And so we should be having more of these conversations
00:52:43
Speaker
with inspiring people like you. So in Seattle did its magic and you were at the right place because that's where you got the idea of getting the instruments from one to the next. And so I'll end with this and then we sing. Ivory says, we are the world was something that everybody could understand. Even if you didn't speak English, you could understand the melody.
00:53:10
Speaker
you could understand the feeling of the song musically. So shall we start from the beginning or? Let's try. We are the world. Come on, the moment. We are the children. We are the ones to make a private thing, so let's start. There's a choice we're making.
00:53:38
Speaker
We're making our own lives, it's true, we make a better day, just you and me. Long live Lezartist, we miss Welcome Week, but that's life, life goes on. Thank you for listening, thank you Casper for the time, I love it. Thank you so much, everything that you do.
00:54:01
Speaker
Thank you, thank you. Yes, I'll keep in the loop and yeah, thank you for everything that you do and good luck wasting money. I'm sure that you're going to break more records. Well, we smashed it already, so we are good. O3D is special. I will contribute my, you know what? I don't, I have to confess, I don't give big amounts, but I give quite frequently. You know, I have this amount that, you know, I'm quite happy to give anyone who has avoided calls.
00:54:30
Speaker
And I don't think about it, I just give that amount. And I know that in financial terms, it won't do a lot, but for me it's also...
00:54:41
Speaker
It's more like a message to the people who are asking, saying, look, I support you. I'm behind you on this. And I'm with you. So I hope that many people will be with you on this because it's a great course. And over time, I'm sure that it'll be an amazing thing. It already is, but it'll be even more amazing.
00:55:04
Speaker
Yep. Thank you so much. And amount doesn't matter. Some of us have more, some of us have less or are giving to a lot of other causes, but the ripple effect of just the mass, like so it's 50% of us. It's all of us makes all the difference. And so thank you. Thank you so much. I love it. And thank you for the support. You're welcome.
00:55:30
Speaker
You are listening to the Republic of Insead now in its Beyond 20 Years Later OSPD Podcast Edition. It is my hope to remind everyone what an interesting and dare I say colorful bunch of people we all are and how much we can contribute to each other, be it through ideas, knowledge or mere inspiration. The podcast is inspired by the original Republic of Insead yearbook
00:55:55
Speaker
produced on paper now 21 years ago by Oliver Bradley and team. Thank you all in team for this contribution to our classes memory and for letting me continue in the tradition title and inspiration included creator and author of the Republic of inside beyond 20 years later, all 3d podcast edition. Am I Milena Ivanova original music by Peter Dondakov with help from their films production.
00:56:21
Speaker
Stay tuned for more as and when it comes. Thank you for listening.