Digital Commons Network^™

Toward Innovative, Liveable, And Prosperous Asian Megacities Gawad Kalinga: Innovation In The City (And Beyond), Raymund B. Habaradas, Martin Lorenzo Aquino

Angelo King Institute for Economic and Business Studies (AKI)

Gawad Kalinga (GK) is an innovative approach that could be the key to solving poverty and homelessness in the Philippines. It is potentially an effective, sustainable, and replicable model that could address the problem of urban housing in the developing world. Its most important innovation is a shift in paradigm of what community development ought to be. Instead of looking at members of the poor communities as passive actors (i.e. as mere recipients of donations or as beneficiaries of support programs), GK considers them as active participants in the development process. Through the help of the caretaker team and the …

Toward Innovative, Liveable, And Prosperous Asian Megacities: Medical Tourism, Mitzie Irene P. Conchada, Paulynne Castillo

Angelo King Institute for Economic and Business Studies (AKI)

Thanks to rapidly improving technology and medical practice standards, medical travel is able to combine the allure of exotic tourist destinations with the promise of affordable and high-quality health care as well as alternatives to western medical knowledge and procedures (such as traditional medicine including yoga, homeopathy, and "Chinese medicine"). Rising medical costs and lengthening queues for medical procedures in the Western world also contribute to making medical services in countries like India, the Philippines and Thailand more than acceptable substitutes to those offered in their developed country counterparts.

Moreover, the literature on the industry indicate that other than the …