Mekeni is Capampangan for “come here.”

As the war in the Middle East drags on, it might benefit the Philippine government to go to Porac, Pampanga and check out how this family-owned meat processing business has survived and thrived through various crises:

The EDSA People Power 1986, when the company was founded; the 1991 Pinatubo eruption that covered most of Central Luzon in volcanic dust, lahar, and floods for about a decade; the 1996-1997 Asian financial crisis; the sporadic but systemic foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) and African swine fever (ASF) that wiped out the key ingredients in most of their finished products; the Covid-19 pandemic; and personal bereavements in its leadership.

“We were founded and have thrived in discomfort, not comfort,” said Mekeni president and CEO Prudencio “Pruds” Garcia.

Here, he offers three concrete lessons not just for businesses, but for policymakers searching for a roadmap in this age of BANI (brittle, anxious, non-linear, and incomprehensible):

1. Keep calm – and institutionalize calm leadership.

“Be calm, that’s my first obligation as leader of the company. Because of uncertainties, normal lang mag‑panic. Normal lang mag‑alala. But if your people see you as medyo na-sh‑shake, the panic spreads and multiplies,” Garcia said.

“In uncertainties, you have to pause, relax, and talk to the Lord, and listen to His message. You may not have the answer right away, but at least it will give you the peace of mind, the calmness, not just to think about yourself, but also the community and the country.”

“Besides, you cannot think clearly when you are panicking,” he added.

So he has instructed his executive committee to think up of ways to “tighten the belt” and “delay the impact” of the war on their workers, community, customers, and suppliers.

Policy lesson number 1: Model calm leadership.

And that means the country’s leaders must:

• Speak frankly about the risks from the Middle East war — on fuel, inflation, and remittances — through empowering messaging. For instance, massively get everyone’s participation in conserving energy, water, and other precious resources to help “delay the impact” of the war, extend the supply of these resources, and eventually shift to a green, circular economy, where reuse-reduce-recycle is a national mantra and an everyday habit.
• Lay out, in advance, trigger‑based responses. For instance, if oil breaches a certain level, or if a major shipping lane is disrupted, the government will start rationing fuel with a clear, logical, easy-to-understand, and easy-to-execute rationing plan.
• Communicate regularly and consistently so that everyone understands the plan and do not fill the information vacuum with rumors.

Mekeni’s experience shows that calm is the enabling condition for rational, humane crisis decisions.

2. Helping others is the best way to help yourself.

Mekeni’s most powerful lesson is deceptively simple and rooted in the Filipino concept of kapwa.

“The best time to help is not when you’re comfortable; the best time to help is kung nagsasa-suffer ka rin,” Garcia said.

This ethic, deeply ingrained by Garcia’s parents who founded the company, has shaped their response to all the crises they’ve faced and overcome. After the 1991 Pinatubo eruption, their Tatang asked three of the five Garcia sons who were working abroad to come home and rebuild their ash-covered community.

“All of us worked day and night to rebuild from the devastation of Pinatubo. Ang slogan namin: We have to survive. And for us to survive, we have to help others to survive,” Garcia said.

After an ASF attack on their brand and just as they were preparing a US launch, Covid‑19 arrived. Early on, management realized that the pandemic would last “years, not weeks,” and that their instinct to protect only the balance sheet would have devastating domino effects.

Instead, they made three counter‑intuitive moves:

• Pay suppliers “at least a week earlier than terms so suppliers could also provide for their own people.”
• Ensure that “ang sweldo, the latest is always on time, not one day after.”
• Rebuild their product mix “to avoid layoffs because we have to take care of our people.” Born as an employment buffer, their new “bayani lines” that include fish ball, kikiam, and siopao later became their first exports to the US. In other words, their people‑first approach opened new markets and revenue streams.

Now, with the war in the Middle East, the question for Mekeni management is how to shield “our people, the community, our customers, of course the suppliers” from the energy and logistics shock, even if the macro environment is beyond their control.

Policy lesson number 2: The country’s crisis architecture must reward and reinforce people‑first decisions.

That may mean government helps and fast-tracks the:

• Design of subsidy or support schemes that kick in quickly for firms that commit to no‑layoff or minimal‑layoff policies during defined shock periods.
• Short‑term financing and tax relief to firms that maintain on‑time payments to small suppliers, recognizing that this keeps entire local supply chains alive.
• Support of product diversification efforts — through technical assistance, export promotion, and regulatory flexibility — when firms pivot to protect jobs, as Mekeni did in its “bayani lines.”

The precept that “when you help others, you help yourself” is a description of how resilience is built from the bottom up.

3. Think global, act local.

From a small rural town in the Philippines, Mekeni has had to think like a global company. Its customers include overseas Filipinos, its inputs are exposed to volatile world prices, and its market is shaped by foreign outbreaks (FMD and ASF), pandemics, and now war.

When the Middle East conflict escalated, Garcia did not treat it as someone else’s problem. He immediately traced ripple effects on energy, logistics, and the orders of customers in the region.

At the same time, his concrete actions are disarmingly local: strengthen support for workers and nearby communities, recalibrate the company’s 40‑year plan because “the environment has changed,” and insist that while plans must change, “the goal cannot change: We have to be stronger for our people, for the community.”

Policy lesson number 3: Read the war globally, but respond locally.

For the Philippine government, that could mean:

• Granular mapping of barangays and sectors most exposed to Middle East risks: agri‑food chains heavily reliant on fuel and imported inputs, ports or logistics hubs vulnerable to route disruptions, and communities with high concentrations of OFW families.
• Targeting assistance — fuel discounts, logistics subsidies, credit guarantees, and social protection — into hotspots instead of spreading support too thinly.
• Working with LGUs, co‑ops, and business groups to co‑design local contingency plans. For example, transport sharing, community‑level energy conservation, and emergency income support tied to local public works (similar to TUPAD).

By thinking globally but acting locally, protections are concrete and felt where they are needed most.

‘Hindi ka dapat sumuko’

To the Garcias, crises are tests of leadership, integrity, and community. To them, the Mekeni story is about enduring crises with calm, compassion, and local action.

Come here, the Mekeni founder once told his sons in 1991. Help rebuild the community that allowed you to finish school and opened opportunities for the family.  

Through every crisis, Mekeni applied these three lessons together as a family, as a business, as a community — as one team.

“We have to work as a team. Hindi pwede ang kanya-kanyang kayod. We have to work toward one direction,” Pruds said.

Through all these crises, Mekeni has grown from about 20 employees in 1991 to 1,400 today. The 1,400 families who now depend on the company are the main reason Tatang ultimately pulled back his own fatherly advice for Pruds to sell, given after two brothers passed away during the pandemic and Pruds had resolved to sleep only four hours a night for two years to cover the work his brothers left behind.

“Hindi ka dapat sumuko.” You cannot give up because of them, his father told him.

The same inclination can sometimes run in public leadership, as there are limits to what one state can control in a global war. But within those limits, there is enormous room to choose calm over panic, people over short‑term profit, and grounded local action over abstract rhetoric — altogether and all together, working as one.

In the story of the Philippines, this war may be the one in which the country and its people emerge not unscathed, but still standing — because we never gave up on each other.