CEBU CITY, Philippines— Skip Yowell, co-founder of the world's leading maker of daypack bags, in his aim to inspire students including small time entrepreneurs during his recent visit here, shared his experiences on how he and his cousin made a major success out of the JanSport brand.

Yowell, Vice-President for Jansport’s Global Public Relations, co-founded the company with his cousin Murray Pletz and Murray's girlfriend Jan where the name Jansport came from.

Yowell said the company started when he and his cousin decided to hike and climbed mountains across America instead of working after graduating from college. “We were fresh graduates from college who didn’t want to work,” he said.

In the course of their indulging in their passion for the outdoors, Pletz developed a backpack using an aluminum frame.

The product was submitted as an entry and won a design contest and their prize money was used as seed capital to start the company which now produces eight million bags annually. (Phoebe Jen Indino)

COMMUNITY POLICING URGED

ILOILO CITY, Philippines — The Police Regional Office (PRO-6) Director, C/Supt. Cipriano Querol Jr., is pushing for the revitalization of the Barangay Peacekeeping Action Team (BPAT) in the city’s 180 villages here.

The BPAT is the manpower arm of the PNP’s Barangay Peacekeeping Operations (BPKO). In a recent dialogue, he asked barangay officials here to give importance to the benefits of community policing even as he observed that there is lack of awareness among local officials and even the police on such action.

“I wanted them to understand how important community policing is in crime prevention,” Querol told local newsmen here. He emphasized that community cooperation is imperative in curtailing crime rate in the city and said it is one of the ways to address the series of incidents in Iloilo, which includes the murder of a police officer and a local businesswoman.

He also said it is timely as the notorious Bukas Kotse Gang are once again stepping up their preying on car owners. Also, Querol said he wanted to correct the perception that village peacekeepers are tandems of barangay tanods and police officers. (Tara Yap)

ODD-EVEN SCHEME SCORED

BORONGAN CITY, Eastern Samar, Philippines — Representative Ben P. Evardone (Lone District, Eastern Samar) is scoring the odd-even scheme being imposed by the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) saying it greatly affects the operations of provincial buses and its passengers from the provinces.

In a privilege speech delivered at the Lower House Wednesday last week, Evardone called such MMDA-imposed scheme “lamentable,” and said that among those affected are his constituents from Eastern Samar who take provincial buses in the province to Metro Manila and are “greatly inconvenienced as they cannot directly reach bus terminals in Cubao, Dimasalang, and Pasay as the buses they’re riding in cannot enter EDSA.

Aside from passenger buses from the Visayas, provincial passengers from the North are also affected.

“These passengers from the provinces, particularly those from Eastern Samar are the ones affected by the odd-even scheme as they have to take two bus rides to reach their destination (in Metro Manila), which is a financial burden to them,” Evardone told Eastern Visayas media practitioners here. (Nestor L. Abrematea)