In old Danish mythology, Ask Yggdrasil is the name of the tree of wisdom and life. Ask is the Danish word for the ash tree, and it is also a wordplay that encourages our students to ask questions to continue learning.

Ask Yggdrasil is solely operated by donations from Stig Brodersen, a Danish investor. You can find the foundation’s board of trustees on our About page.

The starting point for the decision to focus on the Philippines was to optimize for helping as many underprivileged senior high school students as possible per dollar donated and to eliminate the risk of fraud. Through The Investor’s Podcast Network, Stig Brodersen is well-connected with trustworthy individuals in the Philippines. 

Stig Brodersen doesn’t have any other affiliation with the Philippines, nor does the foundation has any legal ties with The Investor’s Podcast Network. They are two separate entities. The Investor’s Podcast Network is a for-profit company registered in the United States, whereas Ask Yggdrasil is a charitable organization registered in the Philippines.

At Ask Yggdrasil, we aim to help as many underprivileged high school students as possible. Since money is a finite resource, we must focus on empowering as many students as possible to provide them with better job opportunities. The University of the Philippines allows us to achieve this because it is one of the best universities in the country, and the Filipino government heavily subsidizes its tuition fee.

We don’t have any affiliation with the University of the Philippines. If any other university provided the same job opportunities for the same investment for our alumni, we would be just as happy to work with them.

Ultimately, the goal is to build the Ask Yggdrasil Senior High School (Grades 11 and 12). Before that, we plan to start small and continue learning. The first steps are to help students with the University of the Philippines College Admission Test. As we continue learning, we plan to take on bigger challenges toward our goal gradually.

At the moment, the answer is no. We can’t think of anything worse than wasting other people’s money, and before we’re sure what works and what doesn’t, it doesn’t seem prudent to accept donations.

Generally, the answer is no, though we might eventually accept time donations from alumni. This approach came from Stig Brodersen when he was donating his time to helping refugees in Denmark. He experienced that many who donated time didn’t provide the best service to the refugees. Similarly, we only want to deliver the best service and education to our students, and it’s better done paying our staff.

Right now, the answer is no. But we will eventually be looking to employ local Filipinos. We’re looking to pay above average salaries for our staff’s above average performance. The intention is to provide elite education for underprivileged senior high school students. Everyone will get a key performance indicator and bonus based on how many students get accepted by the University of the Philippines.

In a business, you want to maximize profit and get the highest return per dollar you invest.  Similarly, when donating to Ask Yggdrasil, we want to maximize the number of students accepted by the University of the Philippines per dollar donated.

We want to help as many as possible, so we intend only to help underprivileged senior high school students who otherwise wouldn’t be able to get into the University of the Philippines.

By helping those with the most potential, we help more through a derivative effect. We can help even more people because those with more potential can, upon graduation and once they are in good jobs, help their families and local communities.

Ask Yggdrasil has been heavily influenced by Dakshana. We want to set up a similar charitable organization with distinctive Filipino traits. Reading the first annual report gives you a very good idea of the framework. The 24-page annual report is worth a read, but to understand why we want to help the students with the highest potential, you might read only page 19.

At Ask Yggdrasil, we want to run the charity using business principles and measure our impact.

Here is a generic scenario that illustrates how we think differently:

We may help students with limited potential and increase their probability of getting a PHP 20,000 per month job from 0% to 30%. For the same cost put toward their education, we could also help another student with more potential to get a PHP 100,000 per month job and increase their probability from 0% to 90%. This student can be the breadwinner and help their family and local communities more. It is not because some students are more worthy than others.

It’s a question of investing in those students who otherwise would not be able to afford a good education and give them the best opportunities to empower those dear to them. It might sound counterintuitive, but helping the highest potential students is the best long-term investment in helping students with the least potential.

There are no expectations or obligations for students to help their families and local communities or make donations to Ask Yggdrasil. At Ask Yggdrasil, we believe in leading by example and providing help to those less fortunate. Once our alumni are in well-paying jobs, we hope to empower them to empower their families and make them role models in their local communities. If they decide not to share their good fortunes, we still wish them the best of luck. Pure charity shouldn’t come with strings attached.

Many private universities in the Philippines have scholarship programs. This is great, but they typically don’t do much for social mobility. It typically benefits the middle class and sometimes the lower middle class. Consider a doctor who, upon graduation, typically lives in the bigger cities and services the middle and upper classes.

You also have programs that help the poor with food, clean drinking water, and illiteracy. Just like the scholarship program, that is also a noble cause but typically doesn’t change social mobility.

At Ask Yggdrasil, we want to help the poor in the Philippines rise to the very top and create true social mobility. We want to show the young boys and girls in their local communities that they, too, can become successful.

Furthermore, a doctor from a poor background is more likely to help their local community with health services than someone from a middle-class background on a scholarship. Similarly, an economist alumnus is more likely to help start small businesses in the poorest neighborhoods and a lawyer alumnus to defend the rights of the poorest.

Any alumni of Ask Yggdrasil has no formal obligation to pay back anything to Ask Yggdrasil, their family, or their local communities. However, we think in probabilities, and we know that the odds of the wonderful derivative effects changing the Phillipines for the better shift in our favor if we can create true social mobility.

We wish we had the resources to operate a school from grades 1 to 12, but that is unfortunately not the case. The business world heavily inspires us, and one of the iron rules is that it’s impossible to be the best at everything, and everyone needs to specialize to win in their niche.

We have chosen to focus on students we can help pass the University of the Philippines College Admission Test because our competencies and vision for Ask Yggdrasil are most aligned there. Simply put, there is where each peso yields the best returns for us. The “return” is helping as many Filipinos below the poverty line as possible to gain social mobility.

Our team is told to do three things:
1. Provide the best education. We define “best” as optimizing the student’s probability of passing the UPCAT.
2. Find the best talent in the Philippines.
3. Collect data that verifies that the student’s household income is below the poverty line (PHP 13,873.00 per month as of 2024).