Helping others doing what you like sounds like a dream. But social entrepreneurship does not come easily. For every step forward, we take one back. Administrative and logistical topics sometimes become nightmares because we lack the knowledge. A typhoon prevents mothers from working for weeks because their roofs were lost. Materials supplies are out of stock, unforeseen and unexplained. Not just at the stores where we are 'suki' but just everywhere we look. Prices suddenly increase. Manila traffic makes life slow down on the worst possible moments. Around us we find support in others; other social enterprises who share knowledge and encouragement, our consumers returning to buy more or spreading the word. Help comes from unexpected angles. But in the end, the Tondo days make it all worthwhile. We see the impact on the mothers we work together with. We see their growth in independence, quality of work done, we notice they are starting to share their own opinions.

And then at Christmas we were able to return the profits made to the team. We celebrated our first year and took pride in our achievements together. What will 2019 bring? At home we read the thank you notes and we cried. 2019 will be better. One step at the time.