“My father always had a desire to make a difference, you can see it with the way he lived his life”, recounts Lisa Gokongwei-Cheng, the third child of Mr. John Gokongwei Jr. and General Manager of Gokongwei Brothers Foundation. To celebrate the foundation’s 30th anniversary in 2023, she tapped journalist Lala Rimando and film maker Troy Bernardo to create a documentary entitled “A Boy, a Bicycle, and a Legacy: Remembering John Gokongwei Jr.”
The story is told through the eyes of the people he worked closely with and the beneficiaries of the foundation’s projects. Troy Bernardo, director of the film, said that it was an inspirational experience for him to get to know Mr. John through the stories of others, and his lingering thought throughout the project was “I wish I had met him.” Mr. John passed away on November 9, 2019, almost five years after the documentary is being shown. The short film is the first of a tri-platform project about Mr. John’s legacy, followed by a book and podcasts on his life and business respectively, that will be released in the next few years.
The Gokongwei Brothers Foundation takes pride in its various programs that have reached over 50,000 teachers, potentially impacting more than 1.5million learners over the country. GBF started with scholarship programs, institutional endowments and building a technical training center to provide access to quality education for underprivileged youth. Of late, they have expanded to educators’ development programs with the belief that investing in educators will have a positive multiplier effect on student learning outcomes. GBF is also using edtech solutions to empower educators and learners to teach and study more effectively.
To view the full documentary, please visit the Gokongwei Brother Foundation Youtube page