Celebrating UPLIFT (Part II) (Sabong News)
Author
Philip Cu Unjieng
Date
MARCH 06 2022
As I mentioned last Sunday, the first ever awardees for the Manila Bulletin UPLIFT Awards have been informed of their distinctions; and in honor of Women’s Month, I first went through the woman awardees – who came from the categories of Sports (Hidilyn Diaz), e-Commerce (Mayor Abby Binay, representing the city government of Makati), and the MSME’s (AGREA CEO & founding farmer Cherrie J. Atilano). I then made the remark that there was one more awardee of the female gender, but that technically, she wasn’t a woman yet.
In the category of Agriculture, our awardee is the father-daughter team of Muneer & Raaina Hinay. Hailing from Zamboanga City, the Hinay’s founded Kids Who Farm, an advocacy that combines education and food production, and aims to spur children to be more interested in agriculture, so they don’t forget that what we eat at the dinner table started it’s life in a field or farm. Raaina is now 11 years old, and she is the inspiration for how this advocacy took flight. She herself leads the demonstrations on hydroponics, managing biowaste, and urban gardening; and all the members are volunteers. Muneer is a project manager of the World Wide Fund for Nature’s Sustainable Food Systems Program.
For Public Service, our awardee is Presidential Assistant for Entrepreneurship Joey Concepcion. Our panel of judges would have taken into consideration how he was one of the private sector’s leaders in our national Covid-response, and how he sought to stimulate our national recovery program and jumpstart the economy during the darkest of periods of the pandemic. Through GoNegosyo he was instrumental in the Covid vaccination drive, and was a fulcrum for helping our numerous MSME’s survive the worse of the pandemic fallout. His steadfast commitment to being a voice for rational discourse, for reasonable and far-looking measures can not be discounted. His status as a concerned citizen, producing results, is to be admired.
The Entertainment category sees Actor John Arcilla as our awardee. For his stellar acting work in On the Job: The Missing 8, he snagged the Volpi Cup for Best Actor during the 2021 Venice Film Festival. The filmfest at Venice is universally considered one of the Big 4, along with Cannes, Berlin, and Toronto; so we can’t discount how prestigious a feat this is, as he’s the first Filipino to take home the Cup. The elite company he now keeps include such past winners as Brad Pitt, Adam Driver, Joaquin Phoenix, Colin Firth, and Javier Bardem, just to name a few. His storied career will have us remembering him in other films such as Heneral Luna, Birdshot, and Metro Manila. I love how when interviewed recently, he mentioned one of his current dream roles would be to portray a Marvel villain.
In Big Business, Ayala Corporation is recognized for their laudable corporate response to the Covid pandemic throughout 2021; assisting their eco-system of employees, partners, customers, and the broader populace get through the health crisis. Their Covid-19 initiatives saw over ₱16 billion dedicated across various fronts by the first half of 2021. AC Health administered the initial one million doses that Ayala acquired under different tripartite agreements for it’s employees and stakeholders. And still on the healthcare front, Ayala partnered with government in it’s testing capacity by building laboratories, plus donating RT-PCR machines and medical supplies to various LGU’s.
On the economic front, Ayala’s rent condonation assisted merchants to sustain their operations. And with Caritas Manila and the Philippine Disaster Resilience Foundation, Ayala spearheaded a consortium that raised ₱1.7 billion to purchase and distribute grocery vouchers and in-kind donations, which benefitted 14 million individuals in the most vulnerable barangays of the Greater Manila area.
That’s seven of our 10 categories covered, and I’ll talk about eight to 10 next Sunday. Thanks again to our current crop of co-presenters and sponsors, to ICTSI, GCash, Wilcon Depot, SMDC, along with The Medical City, Lexus, Centro Escolar University, and Moët & Chandon. They’ve been so essential in making this concept a reality.
We’ll be having a hybrid event the first week of April, when we hope to gather as many of the awardees as possible, along with the sponsors, the judges and the MB editors. Especially at a time when things seem hopeful and heading back to normal, it’s good to remember those who gave us hope, who inspired us, who went beyond the call of duty, and/or made us proud.
