For fighting poverty and championing sustainability, Shawntel Nieto received, among others, the Diana Award, Dalai Lama Fellow, Forbes 30 Under 30
Working to uplift the lives of people in need since she was 19, Shawntel Nicole M Nieto looks back on one special moment that kindled her passion for philanthropy. In 2015, she was spending time with the marginalised sector along the floodway in her hometown Cainta, inspired by the community service she saw in her parents.
“A guide, Aling Dolor, was assigned to me by the local government,” Shawntel tells her story. “We were together often enough and soon became friends.” But when Aling Dolor took Nieto to her home, the young girl was surprised to see not a single electrical appliance. She has learnt that her friend was not able to pay her bills for the past months, despite being employed. “When I got back home and turned the air condition on, I realised how easy life was for me while my friend was having a hard time,” Shawntel continues. “I felt that was not right. So I vowed to help people get out of poverty which, for the first time, became personal to me.”
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She then enrolled in Management of Applied Chemistry at the Ateneo de Manila University, after finishing grade school and high school at Miriam College. With six of her university classmates, Shawntel designed bikes which could generate electricity for storage in a battery as well as push water through filters to create potable water. The social enterprise was called the Big Mike Bike (BMB) Solutions.
In the next two years, the BMB would be recognised the world over—from the Hultz Prize, a student social entrepreneurship competition, and the Hello Tomorrow Global Summit in Paris to the Annual Investments Meet in Dubai.
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She became a partner of the Global Changemakers Association in 2017 and became a Dalai Lama Fellow the following year. The bike project eventually stopped. “In 2018 my friends and I decided to surrender leadership of BMB. We felt we were not in a position yet to lead something this big because potable water if it spoils or goes wrong could endanger the health of many,” says Shawntel, adding that they have all remained good friends till now.
The recognitions continued even after Dubai. Shawntel has been internationally and locally recognised mostly for her stand on poverty alleviation as well as past works, future vision and desire to be a better leader. In 2021, she received the prestigious Diana Award, named after the late Princess of Wales and given to young leaders sparking change across the globe, the first Filipino to receive this award. This year, she was in the Netherlands for the Nudge Global Impact Challenge and was named a Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia Honoree under the Social Impact category. Recent honours were mostly for the One Cainta project.
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