OFN Philippines

Hello everyone,

We are applying to be an OFN affiliate.

I am Kristina Lim, a software developer and small-time business owner in the Philippines. I helped in the development of the OFN software as a contributor from 2018 up to early 2020. I actually officially stepped back as contributor earlier this month because of other commitments.

I don’t have credentials in relevant fields to OFN aside from my skills in software development, but I feel strongly about a fair society and equal opportunities. Last year, I already expressed our interest in launching an OFN Philippines via Slack, especially because of the socioeconomic issues that it tries to solve.

Currently, there is a big disjoint between suppliers and buyers of fresh goods here in the Philippines because of community quarantines due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We understand the challenges of starting an OFN instance at this time, but are already planning in order for the launch to be effective. The community quarantines are announced to be only until mid-April, but realistically there is a chance this will be extended for a couple more months which is really worrying.

Legal entity

Our company, Kalinaw Business Services, Inc., a duly registered business in the Philippines intended for humanistic / social change / social habits projects.

Planned platform fees

We discussed this because you might ask.

Our plan is to have zero platform fees while COVID-19 is still an issue or much later. Afterwards, we plan to invoice 1.5% of sales for sellers with transactions over PHP 5,000 (around USD 100). We used the pricing model of other OFN instances as starting point.

Contributions to the OFN commons

I am a software developer and my partner Marianne Cabrillos is a supply chain specialist (industrial engineering). While we have full-time work (myself with flexible hours), we are eager to contribute to the OFN commons with some of our time and the time of paid contractors/employees, a percentage of income from the platform (expected to be small), producing more training materials for sellers and buyers, etc.

Looking forward to your feedback.

Salamat!

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This is fantastic news. I’m very happy to support you - especially on the non-tech bits - getting this going in the Philippines. If you are ready - please review and sign our pledge. OFN Community Pledge - v1.0 - 1 June 2017

Welcome!

I have just signed the pledge: Community Pledge v2 - January 2020

Thank you very much for your email and the support, @tschumilas!

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