Senators on Tuesday commended seven young people who made remarkable feats at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The lawmakers, in particular, cited David Lopez Almirol, Jr. founder and CEO of Multisys Technologies Corp.; Lesley Jeanne Yu Cordero, senior disaster risk management specialist at The World Bank; Edgardo Tolentino Elago, master teacher 1 of the Department of Education (DepEd); George Ilagan Royeca, co-founder, DBDYC, Inc. ANGKAS; Dr. Raymond Francis Tolentino, director National Telehealth Center, UP Manila-NIH; Victor “Vico” Sotto, Pasig City mayor; and Capt. Ron Tendido Villarosa, Jr. special forces regiment, Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP).
All seven individuals are awardees of the The Outstanding Young Men (TOYM) Award in 2020 of the Philippine Jaycees.
“If TOYM’S batches were given names like they do at PMA (Philippine Military Academy), this class of 2020 could very well be called the pandemic batch,” Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto said in his sponsorship speech for Senate Resolution Nos. 621, 624, and 670.
“And I believe that what they did during the past year, when civilization was brought to its knees by a virus invisible to the eye, was a key factor in their selection,” Recto further said.
“And rightly so, because...the disciplines they excelled at, these are the very ones which have allowed us to survive the harrowing days and give us hope for a bright future,” he stressed.
Sen. Sonny Angara, for his part, said their individual stories underscore that achievement almost always comes with dedication, passion and vision.
Almirol worked his way up from homelessness and bankruptcy to success by starting as a janitor to being the founder and CEO of Multisys Technologies, a tech solutions company that eventually helped the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) with its contact tracing efforts nationwide.
Elago, on the other hand founded Project Scholar to bridge hard-up but deserving students with a college degree and jumpstarted initiatives helping marginalized indigenous peoples (IP) communities.
His early prototypes of localized instructional materials now serve as templates for distance learning and teaching.
Royeca, who co-founded Angkas—the app-based ride-hailing service—that has formalized and upgraded the jobs of former “habal-habal” drivers.
Cordero, a young Cebuana lawyer, traded Senate plenary duty for field disaster risk mitigation work, leading her to be crowned “Disaster Queen”, according to Recto.
Sarmiento, a 38-year old Iskolar ng Bayan, honored for his gallantry during the Ebola wars in Africa, turned his back on a lucrative job to return to the Philippines and work on his dream of making telemedicine accessible to the last and the least in society.
Sotto, they said, walked the talk in good governance, captured the nation’s attention in doing away with outdated policies and practices, introducing fresh approaches to the day-to-day work of local governments especially during the pandemic and ultimately delivering public services to his constituents with utmost efficiency, effectiveness and transparency.
Villarosa, in his capacity as a soldier, started many initiatives in war-torn areas related livelihood, evacuation, education and infrastructure.
“It was through work such as his (Villarosa) that violent extremism is being put to a halt in our country,” Angara said in his co-sponsorship speech.
“They also remind that there is no age requirement to doing great things. In my view, the youth of our awardees are merely circumstantial—incidental even to the core themes of the stories of our awardees, which are of human perseverance, human compassion and human ingenuity and foresight,” he further said.