Our Story

It started in Davao, in a neighborhood most people would never visit on purpose. Narrow alleys between corrugated tin walls. Extension cords strung between buildings like lifelines. The smell of cooking oil and wet concrete.

Travis wasn’t there as a tourist. He was there because someone told him, “If you want to understand the Philippines, you have to see the parts nobody puts on Instagram.”

Amy ran a sari-sari store no bigger than a closet. She sold sachets of shampoo, individual cigarettes, and canned goods stacked three deep. She hadn’t slept a full night in years because she worried about money every single day.

She didn’t have a bank account. She didn’t have a ledger. She had a plastic bag of receipts and a gut feeling about what sold and what didn’t. Her entire financial life fit in a shoebox.

And yet she was the economic engine of her block. Thirty families depended on her store. She extended credit to neighbors she knew couldn’t pay back. She opened at 5 AM and closed when the last customer left.

Travis walked into that store afraid. Afraid of the poverty. Afraid of saying the wrong thing. Afraid of the enormous gap between his world and Amy’s.

But what scared him most was the realization that he had the skills to help — and he hadn’t been using them. He’d been building software for companies that didn’t need it while people like Amy were running businesses without basic tools.

He walked out of that store with a promise. Not a vague “I should do something” feeling — an actual commitment. He told Amy he’d come back, and he’d bring help.

ProjectPH.Love is that promise kept. Every initiative — the show, the app, the university, the pledge — traces back to that moment in a cramped sari-sari store in Davao.

This isn’t charity. It’s accountability. It’s the belief that technology should serve the people who need it most, not just the people who can pay the most for it.

Travis didn’t do this alone. Amy became the first advisor — because nobody understands sari-sari stores better than someone who runs one. The Dashcore team — developers, designers, and operators — volunteered their nights and weekends to build the first prototypes.

Today, ProjectPH.Love is growing. But it will never forget where it started: in a closet-sized store, with a woman who just needed someone to see her.