I am Ian Russell Baker, and I am an Australian ex-IT Senior Consultant who worked at the top of the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry for 32 years in Australia, as well in United Kingdom and Hong Kong.
IT Background
I have worked in a number of jobs as a young man before getting into the fledgling Electronic Data Processing (Computer) Industry (now called IT or ICT) after 2 years of trying, and finally succeeding, on 7 January 1974 (a great day for me). I started work as a Computer Operator, then Programmer, then all sorts of jobs in an almost random order, and often more than one at a time, including:
IT Manager
Systems Development Manager
Technical Support Group Manager
Consultant
IT Architectural Manager
IT Architect
Enterprise Architect
System Architect
Infrastructure Architect
Change Manager
Communications Manager
Program Manager
Senior Project Manager
Project Manager
Project Leader
Quality Assurance Manager
Problem Manager
Testing Manager
Technical Testing Manager
Senior Business Analyst
Business Analyst
Chief Security Consultant
Chief Strategy & Planning Consultant
Chief Environment & Release & Change Consultant
Chief Technical Consultant
plus many more
Altogether, over 32 years elapsed I:
Did 91 contracts of all types in multiple countries, with quite a number done remotely
Managed about 15,000 people, both IT and general
Managed in total close to a Billion US Dollars
Was a manager on more than 90 occasions
Performed about 120 different IT, General Management, Corporate Management, and Planning roles for more than 400 Corporations and about 50 Government organizations
Did about 2,500 consulting tasks across all IT areas, plus many in General Management and Corporate Management
Produced hundreds of documents to be presented to Company Boards and Senior Management Groups
Made presentations of the documents to those groups
Participated in Brainstorming sessions, Think Tanks, Strategic Plans and Reviews, Tactical Plans and Reviews, Marketing Plans and Reviews, Advertising Plans and Reviews, Competitive Analysis and Results and Strategies, Futuristic Analysis and Plans and Strategies, Effectiveness and Efficiency Reviews and Reports and Strategies, plus general Advice and Guidance as required
Directly managed about 280 projects, usually up to a dozen at a time
Indirectly managed about 600 projects, through about 100 managers I was mentoring
Consistently worked 100 to 120 hours per week for those years, and up to over 140
Was responsible for 15 to 30 tasks to be completed for different managers and often for different parts of the same corporation concurrently, and at peak times of pressure up to 60 concurrent tasks
Was moved around to ‘trouble spots’, and became known as ‘Mr. Fix-It’, where people would say to me, “If it is political, managerial, or technical, Ian will fix it”
Was asked ‘how did I plan my career’, and replied ‘the phone rang’ and ‘people asked me to do things, and they insisted on paying me, even when I told them I couldn’t do it’
Health Challenges
This body of work was done after, and during, a series of serious health problems since birth, including:
About 1,400 left ear bacterial infections that led to operations and nerve deafness, as well infected matter draining into the lungs
About 2,000 viral infections in the airways, that inevitably went to the lungs
Severely compromised auto-immune system unable to cope with infections, since birth and slowly deteriorating with age
Acute lung infections and episodes leading to many near-death experiences
High number of antibiotics causing food allergies and intolerances to the vast majority of food and drink
Need to take large amounts of medications and additives to remain alive and relatively well
Charitable Background
During these many health problems, I spent a lot of time with hundreds of doctors and nurses, and in a family environment where we were a Christian family that just naturally did a large amount of charitable work in our own community, I continued that tradition of helping those less fortunate than myself.
It started at school where I helped other children of various grades above and below me with their problems understanding new schoolwork, helping them grasp complex mathematics and science concepts and their application, guiding them in designing and writing English essays, and tutoring those students who especially needed extra hours of help to keep up with the others. Later it was various projects in our Church to help others in a wide range of roles. This assistance was always free of any charges.
In my IT career, I:
Mentored about 3,500 people providing them with free career advice on what direction and transition they should follow to better their career, including arranging for them to borrow computer manuals at night and weekends from many corporations, guiding them through that training, and assisting them to apply for promotions where they worked, or at other corporations if they wanted to leave.
Was Chairman and President of the Computer Contractors Association (an Australian National IT organisation) for 6 years, and was made the 1st Fellow of the CCA
Was a member of the Australian Federal Government Industry Training Advisory Board for the IT and related industries, with specific responsibility to represent the Information Technology Industry
Ran an IT unemployment service for 7 years retraining and reskilling and assisting successfully 405 out of 405 ex-contractors back into work, from my own funds costing about 0.5 Million US Dollars, including housing, feeding, clothing, and counselling and training them in job search, job application, interviewing, employer research, and preparation for an improved attitude and outlook
Worked confidentially with 43 IT agencies in various parts of Australia to monitor trends in the industry to assist those and other unemployed or underemployed IT contractors and employees, and to particularly chase contracts or employment for the 405 unemployed IT ex-contractors
Attempted to create a large Public Company IT Consulting business, albeit unsuccessfully
Assisted more than a hundred IT professionals to emigrate to Australia to overcome shortages in the IT Industry in Australia
Trained 2 groups of young visitors from Fiji in IT subjects at no charge, and as a sign of thanks for that, I have been invited by the former Prime Minister of Fiji to meet him, and for him to introduce me to the Government, Community, and Judicial leaders of all of the Pacific Island nations
Currently based in the Philippines since June 2013 using what limited funds I have from my disability pension to assist more than 200 poor families, totaling about 2,000 people
New Health Challenge
In the early 2000’s there appeared to be something wrong with my brain, and I continued on trying to get things done in my own way of ‘head down and tail up’. By 2008 I was once again seriously ill with lung problems of some unknown cause, and my brain was continuing to steadily deteriorate, leading to me going bankrupt and losing all assets, as I could not work at all. A number of doctors tried to determine the cause of the problem, and it appeared to them that I was going through some early rapid ageing process, and that I was mentally approaching the age of 80 or 90 or older. In April 2010, a young inexperienced intern doctor found the cause as elevated levels of Parathyroid Hormone, secreted by the usually 4, and sometimes more, Parathyroid Glands in the neck surrounding the Thyroid Gland, but unrelated to it. The condition was diagnosed as Primary Hyperparathyroidism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_hyperparathyroidism), leading to the condition of Hypercalcaemia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercalcemia). I found out from the doctors that the excessive levels of Parathyroid Hormone led to more Calcium being absorbed from food and drink, Calcium lost from bones and teeth, and Calcium being deposited throughout all parts of the body causing increasingly serious problems and symptoms. In October 2011 Professor Leigh Delbridge of Sydney University and his team removed 3 tumors, with 1 of them causing the multitude of problems, including dementia, short-term memory loss, cognitive dysfunction, extreme lethargy, bone and joint soreness, kidney stress, liver stress, digestive problems, vein and artery plaque accumulations, heart wall thickenings, and generally feeling like a very old person in poor health.
Since the operation I have made a steady, if slow, recovery, and my brain is starting to get back to what it was prior to this latest health challenge. My kidneys are starting to operate normally after getting down to Dialysis levels, lungs are improving for the first time in many years, and my body generally is improving, however the memory problems are still present and cause confusion with cognitive reasoning, and for word selection for speech where incorrect words are wrongly chosen (bit embarrassing sometimes). All round, things are getting better, however, the doctors have warned me that I will never get back to where I was before, or where I could reasonably expect to get to. In particular, I may never be able to work like I did before, particularly with the added lung damage of Calcium traces in the bronchial tubes, and leading to many ruptured bronchial tubes that have just snapped. In light of this, I have been racking my depleted, but improving, brain trying to work out what I could gainfully do of benefit to my family, my community, or the world.
The Philippines Journey
Background
The 1st of April, is a somewhat strange day for me. On 1st of April 2002, I set about working on how to set up a completely new and revolutionary charity designed to launch poor people out of poverty as quickly as possible, and hopefully in a matter of months.
In April 1999 I flew to the Philippines for the wedding of my brother-in-law, however little did I know that I had a developing acute lung infection. That lung infection worsened rapidly, and when I was taken to the University of Santo Tomas Hospital in northern Manila, I slipped in and out of a coma. An amazingly proficient and clever Pulmonary (Lung) Specialist, Doctor Lanzona, thought I had 10 to 15 minutes to live at most. Somehow he managed to save my life by putting me on a respirator (electric reversing pump), plus suction to remove at least some of the fluid occupying almost all of my lung volume. It was an extraordinarily clever ploy to solve two competing problems at the same time, of keeping the lungs operating, while partially draining them, and doing that with little or no medical history of my life. I have never heard of that before or since. This was my most recent near-death experience, so I am overjoyed to say that my health problems are a little better with much improved medication, and lots of calm and careful thinking of how to manage my many health problems. I have had many acute problems with my lungs, and with this last one I thought it would be final, but the Doctor and I both fought on, and I am still here to be able to speak about it to you.
As I slowly recovered, I asked the Doctor what I could do to repay him for his brilliance, and his most humble reply was that he had taken an oath, of course the Hippocratic Oath, many years earlier, and this was just part of his job. So I looked around for some way that I could repay this ‘Debt of Honour’ that I felt so strongly that I owed him, and the poor country who had nurtured, trained, and equipped him.
I returned to Australia, never said anything to the client I was providing senior management in IT to, and tried to recover my health. A week after I arrived back in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, I called my Mother in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, and I gave her the news that I had nearly passed away again, and she was distressed once more after so many near-death experiences in the past. She spoke of her belief that God must have some plan for me, to help me through so many catastrophic problems, and I shared this firm belief as much as my Mother. I explained to her that I believe I knew what this plan was, and that was to help the poor people of the Philippines. That was 19 April 1999, and she passed away herself on 3 June 1999, so at least she knew I was on this journey to help the poor people of the Philippines. She was the only person I spoke to about what I was doing, until early 2012 when I sat my wonderful son Ricardo Jaramilla Baker down, and told him in some detail what my plans were.
It took 3 years from 1999 to 2002 to finally come up with the idea of using my extensive corporate skills to work out how to design a charity that could rocket people out of poverty in months instead of many years.
For 10 years I worked away at this huge task of gathering information of what each country was like around the world, what economic problems poor people faced, and what existing charities did to deliver services and assistance to poor people. During this long investigation and conceptual design, I never told anyone, as I was not sure what I could and would do, and I needed to much more deeply understand why many people and charities had failed to eradicate poverty, and in many cases even to reduce poverty.
Finally, when I was recovering from the Calcium Dementia in early 2012, I explained to my wonderful son, Rick, what I had been working on in total isolation, with complete determination to succeed where others had apparently failed. Rick was very enthusiastic, if not somewhat taken aback, but he knows me well enough, and he was not surprised that I was working on something, but he was somewhat amazed with the complexity of the problems, the solutions, and the deliverables to overcome endemic poverty that has existed for centuries. I was still very sick with the excessive Calcium problem, and was having many physical problems, but the main problems were my lungs with the sticky Calcium increasing mucous complications, and the severe Dementia that I had been developing since at least 2006, and maybe as far back as 2002. My lungs and brain were in poor shape, and there was no way I would be able to pass the Altitude Challenge Lung Test that I would have to do to be able to fly on an airplane to get to the Philippines. Rick and I worked out a plan of me walking every day, and doing all we could to improve my lung function, and try to stretch my brain reasoning, speed, and most of all memory.
We both did all we could to get me well enough to fly to the Philippines in November 2012, but I was bleeding from the throat and coughing profusely on the morning of my flight, so my flight was cancelled, with the return tickets lost. We then worked some more to get me on a flight in coming months. My 3 major Doctors insisted that I have a Registered Nurse at the receiving end in the Philippines, which I managed to find. I finally made the flight on 3 to 4 June 2013, and my new nurse and I worked on getting me better and well enough to start planning the detail of helping others. Later her sister, also trained as a Registered Nurse but never sat the final exam, took over, and I managed to stabilize the lungs enough to be just a little bit useful, which was wonderful.
What journey was I destined to follow?
From 1990 to 2002 I made a number of shorter trips to the Philippines, and during this time I was struck with the level of poverty of some of the people there.
In 2008 I moved to Philippines for 2 months with a view to trying to find more about the situation, and what could be done about it. I informally interviewed about 500 ordinary people in shops, on the street, and anywhere I found them. I would introduce myself as an Australian very interested in the Philippines, and would they mind answering some questions to help me better understand the Philippines. All were very helpful, answered every question put to them, and the answers appeared truthful. Typical questions included:
What province or area were they from?
How many brothers and sister did they have?
Were their father and mother still alive?
How many of their family were working or running a business?
What jobs or business were each of them doing?
How much did each of them earn each month?
How many completed college, began college, and finished high
school?
How many OFWs (Overseas Filipino Workers) in the wider family?
How many in the family were looking to become an OFW?
What did they believe were the major limitations on their family?
What did they do when they were in need of money or help?
What level of charitable help did they seek and how often?
What level of charitable help did they receive and how often?
What comments and thoughts did they have about charities?
In their wider family, who were most disadvantaged and needing help?
From this informal process of asking relatively simple questions, the answers were at times expected, whereas others were quite unexpected. It became clear that the key questions were education level, charity support or lack of it, and who were those in the worst situation. The most surprising responses were to the ‘major limitations on their family’ question. Where I was expecting personal answers relating to their family, such as ‘More money’, ‘Better education’, and ‘Better health care’, I received answers of a more general nature. The most common answers being:
‘Political corruption’ was the most common response with, by memory, 100% of interviewees quoting that as the most serious limit on them and their family.
Over-population quoted by over 90% as the next most important limitation, usually expressed as ‘too many kids’, ‘we wanted to stop at x kids, but couldn’t’, and ‘no pill and no condoms’, with the majority of interviewees explaining their membership of the Catholic Church, but their anger at political interference.
‘Lack of English to get a better job here or overseas’ was quoted by about 80% of interviewees, with many of them expressing their frustration with their children ‘being forced to learn 2 subjects in Tagalog’, 10% were happy with Tagalog training, and the remaining 10% quoted ‘Tagalog is a major language today’ perhaps from government publicity. There was a slight increase in the acceptance in Manila, where Tagalog is the local dialect, although this was only minor. No one called Tagalog ‘Filipino’, which is one of the 2 national languages, with the other being ‘English (American)’. Almost all of the interviewees over about 30 years of age were quite vocal in their determination to learn English with the usual phrase being ‘We need English to get a better job here, to get overseas job as an OFW (Overseas Filipino Worker), and to emigrate’, with many expressing their dismay at government policy that they did not agree with.
When it came to money problems, first step was to ask for help from former or current OFWs in their family, then local help, then town or city help, then provincial and national help. About 20% of OFW requests were successful, but this depended on the wealth of the family, whereas the other requests had much less than a 5% success rate, and often close to zero. During these answers it became clear that the chance of help and the amount of help was a major problem for the poorer families. In particular, many of these poorer people were scathing and quite angry with charities that they associated with TV and Radio evangelistic programs, where the charity staff ‘flew in’, ‘filmed things’, and ‘flew out’ when the money ran out, typically after a few months.
The interviewees received help from the following sources in order of level and frequency of help:
OFWs in their family
Barangay (village or neighborhood) where they explained that they were well known and respected by people often in similar circumstances
Methodist Church
Seventh Day Adventist Church
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon) Church
A number of Protestant churches I was not familiar with
Catholic Church, where about 30 interviewees or their families received assistance from a much larger number of about 200 who applied, and went through what they claimed was a lengthy process that many abandoned
Government assistance, mainly from municipal, then national, and then provincial
Iglesia ni Christo, where no interviewees received assistance, and about 30 stated that they found out that they had to be members for an extended period to be assisted (Iglesia ni Christo now have a Lingap (compassionate care) outreach program to help the poor)
In relation to the poorest members of their wider family, almost all were single parents, and with usually multiple children to rear and support. Although I had not asked for details, most insisted on describing who were the poorest and why. About 15% were men with wives who had died, become disabled, or disappeared. Excluding death of husbands, almost all of the remainder were women who had been abandoned by men after becoming pregnant, with many of them repeating that scenario with more than one male partner. A number of respondents described how this had disrupted education and work prospects, meant that the immediate family and beyond had to save considerable sums to pay for medical, schooling, and general support of a number of children. Most of the single parents were house-bound, or left their children with relatives to seek work in the major cities, or occasionally as an OFW. This meant either a much more severe level of poverty for the family, or long periods of separation of the parent from the children, or another family member sacrificing their life to assist other family members. Some of the stories they described to me were harrowing, and remain with me to this day, most often from the unexpected death of the ‘breadwinner’ parent.
What Could and Should I Do?
After gathering this information, I was somewhat at a loss not knowing what to do. As my health rapidly declined in following years, I had plenty of time to consider what was needed, and how to do it. My unusual background in IT and Corporate Management provided me the skills to ‘Dream’ the concepts, as in ‘Think Tank’ meetings. I then did the ‘High-Level Planning’ phase using skills gained over 30+ years, then it was detailed ‘Documentation and Planning’. Now it is the IT (Information Technology) phase, which is by far the biggest component of the work to be done. Finally, there is a considerable amount of ‘Marketing, Media, and Promotion’ work to be done, which I also have worked in for some years for corporations. Much of this complex analysis work was done during a period of Dementia and short-term memory loss, as a form of therapy to try to reduce the effects of the excessive Calcium illness I was suffering, and am gradually recovering from over coming years. All planning has been on the basis of focusing on what the ‘customer’ (poorer person to be assisted) requires, and when they require it.
Close to half of the respondents made it clear that they were not seeking charity, but were looking for opportunities to better themselves and their family, and to retain control of their own decisions and destiny. Many complained strongly of having to effectively beg for money and help from various organisations. Using this information, I set about working out what was required, how it could be done, what support and infrastructure would be needed, and how it should be structured. Much of this complex work was done when my brain was at its worst, and the doctors kept urging me to ‘keep your brain busy’ and ‘if you don’t use it, you will lose it, permanently’. In addition, when I was not thinking well enough to do the complex thinking, I recorded TV programs mostly in English, but with some in foreign languages with English subtitles. This required less complex thinking, but kept my brain super busy, and that aided my slow but gradual recovery. From this most careful thinking and planning, it became clear that the biggest impediment to people improving their life, and particularly their income and therefore their ability to support their impoverished family, was poor education, and most importantly their poor level of English.
The Charitable part of the design is to educate and assist people to get high paying jobs, or set up micro-businesses producing goods and services to sell primarily to the external economy (outside their home country), due to the challenging nature of the internal economy where prices are very low. There are also thousands of tiny under-capitalized businesses competing for a limited number of customers who have a severely limited amount of money to spend. It is the classic matter of “Supply and Demand”, with a high number of suppliers, and a limited number of buyers. Sales are to be primarily by way of websites in a number of foreign languages, with the primary one being English. Micro-financing (very small loans), mentoring, follow-up, and IT and Business support are in the assistance package, with administration done locally by suitably respected people. We have already started this, and the results so far are very promising.
The design of the structure is to have a registered Charity in the country where we operate, and where we believe the services of the Charity are needed, and where we are welcomed and successful in setting up the Charity’s operations. There are impediments in doing that registration in the Philippines, due to governmental restrictions and an extremely high cost to actually set up the Charity, so we are just helping poor people in the meantime.
There is one Support Organisation, which is ‘ejeti.net’, operating internationally in the Internet space, providing goods and services with a view to maximizing profits, so as to be able to donate funds quickly to the Charity, as and when those funds are needed most. The Support Organisation will provide IT, corporate, marketing, documentation, and communications skills to the Charity at no cost, again to maximize the amount of money available daily within the Charity to help the millions of poor families in the quickest way possible, and at the fastest rate of growth to spread the good deeds of the Charity as soon as humanly possible.
The costs of running the Charity will be kept to the minimum, so the number helped can grow at the maximum rate.
The Support Organisation will provide a series of Virtual Services, where services are provided remotely around the world, to generate more cash quickly, so as to accelerate the growth rate of the Charity, and those being assisted by the Charity.
How Does This All Work?
We will set up a single corporation, and in an appropriate manner for our needs, as we will be donating considerable funds from profits to Country Charities, which are tax-free, and low compliance saves money that can be donated and used to great benefit of the poor. It is primarily an IT (Information Technology) corporation that provides services at no charge to the Charity, and the vast majority of profits will be donated to the Charity, as they need funds to provide their much needed services to the poor. This corporation will provide goods and services of the widest possible range to the general public and businesses around the globe. The Charity will assist people to set up a micro-business providing initial start-up capital, advice, assistance, marketing on their web pages and country and general and ‘ejeti.net’ web pages as well. If a potential buyer enters the ejeti.org Charity web site and is looking for a product, they can search for that product by selecting a specific seller, area, state or province, country, or unrestricted, and then get the results of that search for Charity supported sellers only. If they enter via the ‘ejeti.net’ domain, they will get all products by default, with the same search behavior, but can also restrict to Charity only. Our objective over many years is to empower millions of families with small businesses that grow, and lift them out of a continuing cycle of poverty, generation after generation.
A Hand-Up and Not a Hand-Out
The most emphatic response to the questionnaires was that poorer people were not looking for charity, but for assistance to make a better life for them and their family, and most of all they wanted control of their own destiny. What one might call ‘a hand-up’, and not a ‘hand-out’, and those words were made strongly by a large number of those interviewed.
The Journey So Far
I have typically lent out about 60% of Australian Federal Government Disability Support Pension, and lived just like the poor people do. If it is good enough for them, it is good enough for me. So far I have lent out about PHP 6.8 Million (about USD 119,000, AUD 184,000), plus PHP 1.2 Million (about USD 21,000, AUD 33,000) loaned to me by my wonderful son Rick, totaling about PHP 8.0 Million (about USD 140,000, AUD 217,000), and helped about 300 poor families in the Philippines, which totals about 2,000 poor people. However, this is not very much compared to the approximately 70 million people in poverty here, but it is a start.
Along the way, people increasingly became aware of what I was doing on my own, and they have constantly asked for money, which is a bit difficult to deal with having to say “No”, as I have very limited funds. However, some people overseas have heard about what I am doing, mostly by ‘word of mouth’, and they are urging me to do my best to set up a registered charity, and they will donate substantial sums of money on an ongoing basis. This was more than a shock to me, living in my own small world of trying to help a few.
I have met some absolutely amazing people in my journey, and one of them was my Mother. After I would survive another near-death experience, she would say, “I don’t know why God is keeping you alive, but there must be a reason.” Looking back at those very private and difficult conversations with her, it is clear that everything I have done in my extremely busy life, despite many acute episodes, is now coming to fruition to help other people rapidly out of poverty, hence the strange and unexpected importance of the 1st of April to me personally, and to the many people I have helped so far, and the hopefully millions we will help in the future.
Since I moved to the Philippines in June 2013, I have interviewed in a more formal manner more than 3,500 families, mostly very poor, sometimes through their school children, who have just enough English so I can get them through the questions that I am seeking answers to. I have also interviewed about 800 small, medium, and large business owners and managers, and their perspective on what is wrong in the Philippines, who can be bribed and who can not, and what they think needs to change. The business peoples’ perspectives and views have all helped to form my own ideas of what needs to be done, and how to rectify the recent demise of the nation and economy of the Philippines, to the eternal degradation for the poor people of the Philippines. I have also interviewed active and retired members of the AFP (Armed Forces of the Philippines), NBI (National Bureau of Investigation), PNP (Philippine National Police), and the “security services”, and they have given me details of how the security services and government work together.
Counting up the formal, informal, and brief interviews, that makes a total of about 29,000 people I have interviewed, which I expect would give me a somewhat unique perspective of what it is like to be poor in the Philippines. It is surprising how many people at the end of the questioning have said that it was the first time in their lives that anyone was actually interested in them, what their lives were like, and what their hopes and aspirations were for the future for them and their children. For me, it was a rare privilege to ‘walk in their shoes’, listen to their challenges, joys, hardships, and what they actually want to have happen in their lives, but most of all in their children’s lives and futures.
In addition, I have always had the approach of saying “Hello” to every person I pass even in the street in every country. You never know how it will work out, and that is how I have made friends with thousands of people from around the World. Life can be a joy with a positive attitude. There is a great saying, “Your Attitude determines your Altitude”. I couldn’t agree more. I often would stop at a town or city, be shopping, or going somewhere, and I would wave to people, give them the “thumbs up” sign, and say a big “HELLO!”. In the Philippines alone I have done that with something like 400,000 people. There is never enough life, love, and joy in the World, so we can always add plenty more.