FOR the 19th year, the prestigious The Outstanding Cebuano Award (TOCA), the equivalent of Manila’s Outstanding Manileños and Davao City’s Datu Bago Awards, will honor youthful inspirational luminaries of the millennial generation, among them Talisay City Mayor Gerald Anthony Gullas, Jr. and Daanbantayan, Cebu, Municipal Mayor Sun Shimura.
Gullas, grandson of Rep. Eduardo Gullas, will be recognized for his contributions to public service while Shimura, a three-term Board member, in government service.
The other honorees include Samuel Augosto Jr., in environment protection; Allan Alvez, engineering management; Ramoncito Arquiza, general services; Dr. Cornelio Duaso, science and technology; Rodel Naval, mechanical engineering; Leonides Paragsa, design consultancy; Siegfred Sia, poverty alleviation; and Dr. Edwin Torillo, education.
The awards program will be addressed by former Philippine Consul to the Czech Republic, Dr. Juan Enriquez Dayang, Jr. It will highlight the growing pubic adulation for TOCA awardees as public icons for their dedication to helping make other people’s lives better, and their contributions to improved quality of services in their respective professions.
Minister Dayang, an Aklanon with Cebuano maternal roots, is a San Beda College graduate. He is the first and only foreigner elected as president of the Kyung Hee University Supreme Council in South Korea, where he completed his master’s degree in International Business Management (IBM) with highest honors.
He further took graduate studies at the Asia Pacific College of Diplomacy as an Australian Leadership Award grantee, and went on to earn his Doctorate in Diplomacy at the Australia National University in Canberra under the World Leadership Program of the United Nations University Leadership Academy as U.N. scholar. He is the secretary-general of the Alliance for Youth Solidarity (AYOS).
Equally deserving praise for the TOCA success is its executive director Greg Senineng, former president of the Publishers Association of the Philippines, Inc. (PAPI), Cebu Chapter, and a stalwart of the party-list Alliance for Nationalism and Democracy.
A 2010 Fellow awardee of the Philippine Society of Mechanical Engineers, Senineng, an esteemed broadcaster said the TOCA rites will be the main highlight of his program, Tingog sa Lungsod, over DYCM, which also holds its 37th anniversary shortly at the Sacred Heart Center in Cebu City.
A staunch defender of block-time broadcasting,and president emeritus of the Cebu Association of Media Practitioners, Inc. (CAMP), Senineng has steered the course of TOCA, gaining further appreciation from the usually critical public.
