Couple Wins Social Innovation Award

When Steve and Bette Gibson traveled to the Philippines for the first time in 1995 and witnessed the poverty there, they knew they had to do something.

"I felt what Winston Churchill described when he said, 'To every man there comes in his lifetime that special moment when he is figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered a chance to do a very special thing, unique to him and fitted to his talents,'" Steve says.

The Gibsons took their cue and started the Academy for Creating Enterprise, a business school designed to teach Filipino Latter-day Saint returned missionaries the skills they need to be self-sufficient. The Economic Self-Reliance Center at Brigham Young University recognized the Gibsons' efforts at its 2008 ESR Conference, awarding them the Social Innovators of the Year Award.

"Bette and I were both very pleased to receive the award," Steve says. "We're primarily pleased for the progress it marks for the 1,375 graduates who are doing so well as they work toward economic self-reliance."

As far as the future is concerned, the Gibsons continue to work to improve the Academy and the experience they provide their students. They are also working with another couple to possibly expand into Mexico.