Heard It Through the GripeVine: Our New Abnormal
Over the last two Sundays, I’ve written about seven of the 10 Manila Bulletin UPLIFT Awards awardees, with the seven I’ve cited covering the categories of Sports, e-Commerce, and MSME’s (awardees are women in these three categories); and then wrote about the awardees for Agriculture, Public Service, Entertainment, & Big Business. There are still three categories to disclose, and they’re the categories of (1) Science & Technology, (2) The Arts, Culture & Education, and (3) Healthcare.
And just in case you’ve forgotten, we created these UPLIFT Awards to honor and celebrate those that helped us unite, who performed, who led, who inspired, who brought focus, and who trended, in 2021. It’s our way of recognizing how good news and "silver linings" really resonate, and were so important to us all in the midst of the pandemic year that 2021 proved to still be. We hope to institutionalize these UPLIFT Awards, and turn it into a yearly Manila Bulletin event.
In Science & Technology, our awardee is Dr. Raul Destura. He’s the scientist behind the first local Covid-19 testing kit. As a clinician-scientist, he narrows the gap between Basic Science, Medical Science, Biotechnology, and Community Service. Developing low cost technologies for the control of infectious diseases in the Philippines and for the generation of new knowledge to find sustainable and equitable solutions to the disease of poverty are his two pillars of community service.
UPLIFT awardee for Science & Technology - Dr. Raul Destura.
His first local Covid-19 testing kit was developed in collaboration with the University of the Philippines-National Institute of Health, and funded by the Department of Science & Technology. A known molecular microbiologist, Destura is also known for developing less costly diagnostic kits for the rapid detection of infectious diseases such as dengue, hepatitis, and tuberculosis. Among his several awards & citations, Destura is a Presidential Lingkod Bayan 2019 awardee.
For Arts, Culture & Education, the band Ben & Ben gets our collective nod. A folk-pop band, Ben & Ben made a big splash in 2021 by releasing their sophomore album Pebble House, Vol. 1: Kuwaderno, then ending the year with a major digital concert, entitled Kuwaderno. They performed all the tracks from the album, had guest artists that they’ve collaborated with in the past; and made the supreme effort of redefining the virtual concert experience for their fans. Actors and dancers were included in the full production.
Arts, Culture & Education UPLIFT awardee — the band Ben & Ben.
It was essentially an early Christmas 2021 gift from Ben & Ben to Liwanag — the collective term coined when one refers to the B&B followers and fans. The strong spirit of collaboration was exemplified in Kuwaderno, as it streamed live on Facebook. Formed in 2015, the band was ranked number one streamed Filipino artist on Spotify for two straight years, in 2020 and 2021. And they were busy in 2020 and 2021 in fund-raising concerts for Covid medical relief efforts and for frontliners.
OCTA Research in the Healthcare category is our awardee; and we all know how they were so omnipresent in our lives in 2020 and 2021, as our Covid-19 tracker, and "go-to" well of pandemic and quarantine information. Stylized as OCTAResearch, and alternatively known as UP-OCTA, the group was first composed of eight members or "Fellows," who were affiliated with the University of the Philippines. Eventually, other faculty and alumni of UP, as well as those from other universities, became part of the group.
Healthcare UPLIFT awardee — OCTA Research, with three of the OCTResearch Fellows pictured in the event poster.
First set up in 2019, with the intent to be a polling group, the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in the Philippines, had the private polling, research and consultation firm concentrating on health advisories and Covid cases projections. They would rely on data from the Department of Health, then issue projections, make recommendations, and conduct opinion poll surveys. In August 2021, the group expressed intentions to resume public opinion polling; but we’ll always remember OCTA as our Covid "weathervane."
This completes our report on the 10 UPLIFT categories, and the awardees for this very first edition of UPLIFT. The Awards Night is set for April 7, 2022, at the Manila Hotel. We’re hoping a good number of our awardees can join us; and we once again thank our co-presenters and sponsors: ICTSI, GCash, Wilcon Depot, SMDC and The Medical City, along with Lexus, Centro Escolar University, and Moët & Chandon. Their invaluable support has helped make our pipe dream a reality.