What Go Digital ASEAN Taught Me

When I saw the opportunity to work on Go Digital ASEAN, a project by The Asia Foundation supported by Google.org, I applied almost immediately. I’m a trainer, I work with MSMEs, and I run an MSME myself, so it felt like someone had looked at my CV and interests and designed a project specifically to lure me in. There was, of course, a much bigger reason the program existed: helping small businesses turn access to digital tools into something they could actually use to grow and sustain their businesses. But if I’m being honest, my first thought was less “What an important intervention in the digital economy” and more “Wait, this is literally my thing. They’d be lucky to have me.” I’m usually full of self-doubt, but this one felt obvious.

Two years later, these are seven things that stayed with me.

1. Local examples hit differently

One of my favorite moments happened during a workshop in Butuan, in partnership with the Mindanao Development Authority.

As part of the workshop, we showed examples of green businesses, and I always liked using local businesses whenever possible. I think people engage differently when the examples come from businesses they might actually know or encounter in their own communities.

In Butuan, I used One Closet as an example. Founded by Isabela Blancas when she was just 13, the fashion business rents formal wear instead of selling it, extending the life of clothing and keeping garments in circulation. It also upcycles donated dresses and uses its profits to support education.

Then came the surprise: Isabela was actually in the audience.

So I handed her the microphone and asked her to present her own business.

It was such a surreal and joyful moment.

It also reminded me why I like using local examples. They make the ideas we're discussing feel closer to home, and they give participants something they can recognize, relate to, and perhaps see themselves doing too.

2. Start with the goal, not the technology

My consulting career has been built around problem framing, so I've always been wary of jumping straight into solutions.

Go Digital ASEAN gave me a chance to apply that way of thinking in a very different context.

When you're talking about digital skills, it's incredibly easy to start with the technology.

What platform should they use? What tool should they learn? What does everyone need to know?

But those questions only become useful once you understand what someone is actually trying to accomplish.

One of the first things we asked participants was what their goals were.

I remember a business owner in Cavite who wanted to learn how to use AI for their business. In the same room, there was someone who didn't even have a Facebook page yet.

Both were there to learn about digital tools, but clearly, they didn't need the same thing.

For one person, the question was how to use AI to improve an already existing digital presence. For the other, there were much more basic steps to figure out first.

So rather than asking, "What digital tool can we teach them?", the better question is:

"What are they actually trying to accomplish?"

The right digital solution depends on where someone is starting and where they want to go.

3. One-size-fits-all doesn't work

Designing a program for thousands of people is very different from designing a workshop for one specific audience. And Habi Education Lab and the program team did a great job of giving us the structure while allowing us to customize the workshop as we go along.

The challenge with Go Digital ASEAN was that the people we were trying to reach could be wildly different from one another, as mentioned in the earlier example. You could have someone selling bananas on the street sitting next to someone from a medium-sized company with a dedicated social media team. Technically, they're both MSMEs. But they won't necessarily need the same level of support. The banana seller might need help getting their business online, reaching customers, or accepting digital payments. The company with a dedicated social media team might already be doing all of that and need something much more advanced.

That makes program design tricky. You need enough structure and consistency to deliver something nationwide, while still leaving room for people to engage with it at their own level.

You can standardize the program. You can't standardize the people.

4. Practical beats impressive

One story I remember from the rollout wasn't even from one of my own sessions.

I remember hearing about a participant from Guimaras who worked with another mentor, Lorna Bondoc, to set up an e-commerce page for their business.

What struck me wasn't simply that they built an e-commerce page. It was that they were at the right point in their business to actually use one. And I think that's an important distinction in digital training. You can spend a lot of time explaining what a tool does, going through features, and showing people all the things it can do. Someone can leave a workshop thinking, "Wow, ang dami kong natutunan."

But understanding something during a session and actually using it afterward are two very different things.

In this case, the technology wasn't the starting point. The business was ready for it, and the mentor helped connect the business to the right digital solution. That's what good training should do. Not give everyone the same list of tools to learn, but help people figure out what is actually useful for them now.

For me, good training isn't about how much information you can fit into a session. It's about whether someone leaves knowing what they're going to do next, and whether that next step is actually useful to them.

5. Digital transformation is ultimately about confidence

One of the biggest barriers to learning something new isn't always ability and access. Sometimes it's confidence.

The course designers spent a lot of time explaining the idea of growth mindset, and I understand why. If someone already believes that they're bad at technology, or that certain things are simply beyond them, giving them another tool or another tutorial isn't necessarily going to change much.

They first have to believe that they are capable of learning it.

One of the ways I would make that idea clear during the sessions was by asking participants to name something they couldn't do.

Someone might say, "Hindi ko kayang mag-drive."

Then I'd ask:

"Anong difference nun sa 'Hindi ko pa kayang mag-drive'?"

In English, it's roughly the difference between "I can't drive" and "I can't drive yet."

It's a tiny change in language, but it changes the possibility completely.

"Hindi ko kaya" sounds final. It turns something you haven't learned into something you believe you are incapable of doing.

"Hindi ko pa kaya" leaves room for learning. Maybe you can't do it today. But you can practice. You can learn. You can get better.

That was the idea behind growth mindset, and I found it particularly relevant to digital skills.

People don't always struggle with technology because they can't understand it. Sometimes they've already convinced themselves that technology is something they can't do. And once someone successfully takes that first step, the next one becomes much easier.

The goal isn't just to tell someone what to click. It's to get them to the point where they think:

"Okay. I can actually do this myself."

Technology changes quickly. Platforms change. Algorithms change. The tools we teach today may look completely different a few years from now.

What matters is whether someone develops the confidence to say:

"I don't know how to do this yet."

Because yet means there's somewhere to go.

6. Attendance is not impact

It is very easy to measure a program like this by the numbers.

How many people attended? How many businesses were reached? How many workshops did we run?

And those numbers matter. They tell you whether you delivered what you set out to deliver. But they don't necessarily tell you whether anything changed. The harder questions come afterward.

Did they actually use what they learned? Did a business start selling online? Did someone become more confident using digital tools? Did a business owner change the way they work because of something they learned in the workshop?

The impact data is much more interesting.

In the Philippines, 77% of participants reported positive revenue growth after the training. Across the region, 93% said they felt more digitally savvy and confident using digital tools, while 90% said they had developed the skills to grow their business online and/or offline. Source: The Asia Foundation: Go Digital ASEAN Boosts Digital Growth of more than 215,000 Small Businesses

Those numbers matter because they point to something beyond attendance.

A full room is an output. A changed behavior is impact.

7. It's really the people

As I write this, two years after the project ended, our team group chat is still buzzing. Congratulations for their new projects. Stupid jokes. The usual innuendos. Same energy as when we were on the road together.

The nationwide rollout meant we got to travel together, city after city. We ate our way through different places, shared long days, stayed up talking after sessions ended. People would send us food. We'd try local products someone insisted we had to taste. You'd meet someone for the first time in a workshop and somehow spend the rest of the day talking like you'd known each other forever.

And two years later, I have this weird level of fondness for some of these people that feels less like we used to work together and more like we went to high school together. I know their families. I've been to their homes. I've shared meals with them. They're still some of my closest friends.

One of them even fell in love with me. I had to turn them down. I won't name names. *cough* Kim *cough*.

See? This is why you can't put everything in a project report. A project can have targets, outputs, training numbers and impact metrics. Those are important. But somewhere along the way, you can also end up with people you genuinely care about, places you remember fondly, and stories that stay with you long after the project is over.

The project ended. The friendships didn't. And I'm happy because of that. For most people. Some people I can't get rid of. *cough*