PLDT’s Gabay Guro pays tribute to 2014 graduates

MANILA, Philippines - PLDT’s Gabay Guro does not only find ways to help, it also finds ways to celebrate.

Recently, at the Lighthouse of Meralco Building in Ortigas, Pasig, the force of the PLDT-Smart Gabay Guro Foundation was present to pay tribute to its scholar-graduates from the different colleges and universities in a testimonial dinner they called Simpleng Handog.

Present were PLDT chairman Manny V. Pangilinan and Chaye Cabal-Revilla, chairman of Gabay Guro Foundation; Melanie Manuel, Gabay Guro Scholarship Pillar head; PLDT Home Fibr/DSL head Gary Dujali; PLDT president and CEO Polly Nazareno; PLDT-Smart Foundation president Esther Santos; Philippine Disaster Recovery Foundation president Butch Meily; PLDT HOME business head Ariel Fermin; and PLDT Group Individual business head Charles Lim.

MVP and Revilla thanked the executives and volunteers behind the foundation for their work. They also took the opportunity to disclose Gabay Guro’s progressive efforts as they will soon be sending Filipino scholars to undergo training and education in other countries such as Singapore and Hong Kong.

TV5 resident talent Edu Manzano hosted the event. He was later joined by Binibining Pilipinas-Universe 2014 and PLDT-Home Ambassador MJ Lastimosa (herself a scholar when she was still in school), in giving out prizes to the graduates. Jonalyn Viray regaled the crowd and showcased her own rendition of the Gabay Guro tribute song, Thank You For Believing In Me, originally sung by Regine Velasquez.

During the testimonial dinner, five magna cum laude and 36 cum laude scholar-graduates were recognized. The 88 female and 36 male scholar-graduates feted that night easily bring to a total of 756 scholarship grants from Gabay Guro, with a total of 82 honor-graduates from 37 partner-schools since the start of the advocacy in 2007.

PLDT Gabay Guro, an education arm and a flagship project of PLDT-SMART Foundation, is run by volunteers composed of executives from the PLDT Manager’s Club, Inc. (PLDT MCI). The core is defined by its pillars namely: Scholarships, trainings, housing and educational facilities, livelihood programs, broadbanding and computerization and teachers’ tribute.

PLDT Gabay Guro has been giving training programs to teachers nationwide, 10,000 of whom have benefited from them. It has also been actively participating in the rebuilding of educational structures and institutions nationwide, particularly in those provinces that were ravaged by Typhoon Yolanda. The team had already rebuilt and donated more than 30 classrooms in the provinces of Bohol, Cebu, Tacloban and Capiz. More classrooms are still being built to benefit displaced students and teachers.

Gabay Guro scholar-graduate JP Alvarez, who graduated magna cum laude with a degree in Bachelor of Science Education, Major in Math from the Philippine Normal University, said, “Thank you for responding to us when we called out for help. Thank you for giving us the chance to change our lives for the better. I believe that the best way to give back what you shared is for me to spread the spirit of changing the lives of other people for the better through my profession — teaching.”