QUEZON CITY, Oct. 3 (PIA) -- Two journalists, an arts community advocate, a development communicator, an education innovator, and a television writer/producer are the winners of the coveted 2020 Glory Awards.
Bestowed annually by the UP College of Mass Communication Alumni Association (UPCMCAA), the Glory Awards honor the alumni whose work goes beyond “the usual” consistent track record of excellence. Jose “Jing” Magsaysay, broadcast news veteran and Glory awards juror, explains: ”Excellence in craft becomes only meaningful when it inspires others and drives them to excellence.”
This year’s awardees who were selected by a jury of their peers are Karen Davila (broadcast journalism), Dr. Rey de la Cruz (special education), Deo Endrinal (television arts), Dr. Monina Movido-Escalada (development communication), Lutgardo Labad (arts & culture advocacy), and Criselda Yabes (literary journalism).
Aside from Magsaysay, the other jurors were UPCMC dean and film professor Dr. Arminda Santiago; UPCMC communication research department chairperson Dr. Julienne Thesa Baldo-Cubelo; PR expert and former UP vice president for public affairs Tessa Jazmines; writer-director and 2019 Glory awardee Floy Quintos; film and TV director, writer and educator Jose Javier Reyes; and 2018 Glory awardee Luz Rimban, executive director of the Asian Center for Journalism at the Ateneo de Manila University.
Alumni association president Malou Choa Fagar announced that due to the continuing public health crisis, the Glory awards presentation on November 14 will take place in a virtual environment.
The Glory Awards were inspired by the legacy of honor and excellence of Dr. Gloria Feliciano, the founding dean of UP mass communication programs, who served from 1965 to 1985.
THE 2020 AWARDEES
- Broadcast journalist Karen Davila is a veteran news anchor and correspondent of ABS-CBN. Her long-running daily Q&A show Headstart on ANC puts newsmakers on the proverbial hot seat to illuminate current and controversial issues. Davila began her career as a writer-presenter of documentaries for The Probe Team and was part of the ABS-CBN investigative journalism series The Correspondents. She also moderated presidential debates and the televised sessions of the World Economic Forum-East Asia Summit. She bagged international prizes for her in-depth reporting about children and street drugs, children in jail, and the Marcopper Mining environmental disaster. Davila also won the TOYM (The Outstanding Young Men) and TOWNS (The Outstanding Women in the Nation’s Service) awards and was the Rotary Club of Manila’s Journalist of the Year in 2004. Recently her popular program about successful micro and small entrepreneurs, My Puhunan, was cancelled as a result of the non-renewal of ABS-CBN’s congressional franchise. Nonetheless she is continuing to present inspirational stories of hope and resilience (particularly during the pandemic) on her own social media pages.
- Author and special education expert Dr. Rey de la Cruz is a Palanca award-winning playwright, pioneering alternative filmmaker, gender-equality advocate, and developer of innovative teaching strategies. His research showing the effects of creative drama on social and oral-language skills of children with learning disabilities was featured at conferences on education and published in peer-reviewed journals. Drawing from his versatile range of disciplines, De la Cruz originated and disseminated the classroom use of the ancient Philippine board game sungka in teaching social and math skills, for which he received a diversity award from the Illinois Council for Exceptional Children-Division for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Exceptional Learners. He was an adjunct professor in Chicago State University where he taught special-education courses to undergraduate and graduate students. In recognition of his exemplary achievement in the education field, the Illinois State University College of Education inducted him into its Alumni Hall of Fame.
- As head of ABS-CBN’s content production unit Dreamscape Entertainment, Deo Endrinal is one of television’s top ”showrunners” who has overall creative authority and management responsibility for TV programs. He started as a writer and producer for GMA Network (Martin After Dark and Lunch Date), TV5 (Pops) and ABS-CBN, his home network for the past three decades. Some of the most successful ABS-CBN programs from the 1990s up to the present bear his imprint—from Showbiz Lingo, The Buzz, Today with Kris, Game Ka Na Ba?, Mula Sa Puso, ASAP and recent hits May Bukas Pa, Tayong Dalawa, Walang Hanggan, On The Wings of Love, Kadenang Ginto, The General’s Daughter, and Ang Probinsyano. Since 2018 Endrinal has been producing movies for the digital platform iWant such as Glorious, Bagman, Call Me Tita, and the recent Love Lockdown, which experimented on new ways of filming in response to the restrictions imposed on TV production during the pandemic including health, safety and physical distancing protocols. The denial of ABS-CBN’s franchise pushed the network to find a new home on Youtube and Facebook, where Endrinal helped Kapamilya Online Live garner millions of subscribers in record time and continues to develop new content.
- Dr. Monina Movido-Escalada is an internationally acclaimed development communicator and a professor emeritus at the Visayas State University in Baybay, Leyte. She rose from a research assistant to assistant professor of broadcast communication in UP Diliman in the 1970s. In the past three decades, her research pursued a deeper and better understanding of farmers’ management and decision-making practices. The findings enabled her to develop learning strategies that include entertainment-education approaches using radio soap operas, for example. Her research design, monitoring, evaluation and scaling up initiatives resulted in favorable behavior change in the way farmers manage their resources. Escalada has been honored by the World Bank, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, the UN Environmental Program, and the governments of Vietnam and Japan for her agricultural innovations. She also won the St. Andrews Prize for Environment, the United Kingdom’s only international prize for environmental achievement.
- Lutgardo Labad has been recognized nationally and internationally as a theater artist, teacher, cultural worker, and arts & heritage promoter. He was instrumental in developing the creative arts and theatre curriculum of the Philippine Educational Theater Association. As PETA’s pedagogy and artistic director for 25 years, he conducted workshops for disadvantaged provincial communities, the urban poor, and the indigenous peoples of Mindanao. Labad is most well-known as a musical scorer who won nine awards for his work in cinema classics like Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang (1974), Ganito Kami Noon, Paano Kayo Ngayon? (1976) Pakawalan Mo Ako (1982), Bilangin Ang Mga Bituin sa Langit (1990), Magnifico (2004), and Naglalayag (2004). After deciding to settle in his home province of Bohol in 1994, “Gardy” organized community theater groups across the Visayas to make them integral components of sustainable development thrusts, especially in ecological and cultural tourism. He received the Galing Pook award for best local government unit cultural program and was honored by Philstage with a lifetime achievement award in theater in 2019. He chaired the dramatic arts committee of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts and is the international staging director and impresario of the world-famous Loboc Children’s Choir.
- Criselda Yabes is a veteran freelance journalist and award-winning author of 10 books. Her latest book The Battle of Marawi (Pawikan Press, 2020) “is a rarity, a work that combines top-notch journalism and gripping literature,” in the words of Glory Awards juror Floy Quintos. She began her journalism career reporting on the restored democracy, restive military, and raging insurgencies of the 1980s. That period inspired her first book, The Boys from the Barracks: The Philippine Military after EDSA, in which she traces the history of dissent within the military through intimate portraits of the soldiers who took part in several uprisings. Yabes remarkably won the highest laurels in two different categories of the UP Centennial Literary Prize (2008)—one for her creative non-fiction book, Sarena’s Story: The Loss of a Kingdom, about the fall of the Sulu Sultanate, and another for a book under fiction, Below the Crying Mountain, a weave of love stories set against the backdrop of the Moro rebellion that broke out in the 1970s. "Below the Crying Mountain" was the only Filipino-written novel nominated for the prestigious Man Asian Literary Prize in 2010. It was re-published by Penguin Books Southeast Asia in 2019. #
Source: Philippines Information Agency (pia.gov.ph)
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