Our Story

     In 1998 Ms. Babes Afable, a successful businesswoman in search of meaning, Ms. Jo Bilasano, an internationally-known healer, and Dr. Apin Talisayon, a Philippine government official seeking new ways to pursue his advocacy, asked the question: "Where do we start to make a difference?"

        National policies, corporate strategies and individual decisions ‒ these all start with people's mindsets. Gregory Bateson said, "The problems in the world stem from the difference between how we think and how the world works." How do we help people realize this?

        The healing process we believe starts from within every person, and requires from each person new and better competencies of "working within." For example, we believe people need to learn how to ‒

(a) recognize their limiting assumptions, mental boxes or blindfolds;

(b) acknowledge that mental models are simply that: models, representations of, or beliefs about, reality

(c) accept that people hold many different beliefs about reality

(d) be comfortable with gaps between peoples' beliefs and peoples' experiences of "what works"

(e) be open to other beliefs or mental models, and test them against what actually works

(f) respect reality, or let go of beliefs and assumptions that do not work.

        In 17 August 1999, the Center for Conscious Living Foundation was born. CCLFI is dedicated to social transformation. It attempts to contribute towards this transformation by developing and practicing new and better tools for organizational learning and change.

        In the pursuit of "what works" and innovating "what works better", CCLFI advocates "knowledge-based development". With this advocacy, it pioneered the development and promotion of the field of Knowledge Management, led by one of its board members and directors, Dr. Serafin “Apin” Talisayon. Dr. Talisayon was the first to introduce the concepts and applications of knowledge management to the academe, as a professor in knowledge management, and to various organizations, as resource person offering workshops and lectures. This was at a time when knowledge management was still in its infancy in the international field and was relatively unheard of in the Philippines.

       CCLFI grew and is still growing the discipline of KM, led by Dr. Talisayon, the acknowledged “KM guru” in the Philippines. It has provided free trainings and lectures to various organizations including the KM Systems Bureau of Congress, the Human Resource Management of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, the House of Representatives of the Philippines, the Canada International Develop-ment Agency, and the Philippine Business for Social Progress. 

        It has funded its operations by offering value-adding products and services in the area of KM. Among its first clients that have benefited from its innovative product offerings are the United Nations Development Programme – Small Grants Programme in a project called “Leveraging Best Practices in Sustainable Community Development”, the Shell Malampaya Multipartite Monitoring Team for embedding organizational learning and arriving at a "learning oriented manual of operations", and the League of Cities in the Philippines for an online course in KM.

        The clientele of CCLFI has since grown to include a wide range of organizations, from private to public, profit to non-profit, small-scale to big-scale. These organizations include the Asian Development Bank, the Philippine National Oil Company - Energy Development Corp, Asian Institute of Management, National Economic and Development Authority, the World Health Organization, IBM Philippines, and the Deutsche Gesselschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) GmbH.

        CCLFI continues to expand its frontiers as it moves to the regional arena, engaging clients from various parts of the Asian region. It has assisted UNICEF, STREAMS: Global Coalition of Resource Centers for Water and Sanitation, CIDA, World Health Organization, Project Management Institute and the Baganuur Joint Stock Company based in Ulaanbator, Mongolia.