MANILA, Philippines--Three Filipinos have earned academic distinctions from the University of Hawaii at Manoa (UHM).
The Center for Philippine Studies at UHM recently distributed the awards to outstanding students Jan Vincent Toledo Evangelista, Maria Elena Clariza and Cheryl Beredo, the Department of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
Evangelista was chosen as the 2007 recipient of the Yuchengco Endowment Fund Award amounting to $2,000, it said.
"Evangelista will use the scholarship grant to fund his travel to the Philippines to conduct fieldwork on Philippine-Chinese relations and the Chinese community in the Philippines. He will spend some time at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City, which has an academic exchange program with UHM," the statement said.
"The Endowment Fund was established in honor of Ambassador Alfonso T. Yuchengco, a prominent Filipino industrialist and philanthropist, who has supported programs for education, minorities, community centers, livelihood, medical missions, entrepreneurship, and environmental protection," the statement continued.
On the other hand, Clariza, a UHM masteral candidate in Asia Studies, focusing on the Philippines, is the first recipient of the Ligaya Fruto Pamana Award, according to the statement.
Clariza will receive a scholarship grant of $2,200 for fieldwork expenses in gathering data for her thesis on human trafficking in Mindanao, the DFA said.
"The Pamana Foundation of Hawaii established an Endowment Fund at the University of Hawaii Foundation to honor the memory of the late Manoa resident Ligaya Fruto—Filipina novelist, short story writer, journalist, humanitarian, patron of the arts, social critic and community leader," the statement said.
The third awardee, Cheryl Beredo, a Ph.D. student in the Department of American Studies, received the Philippine Studies Prize for the best paper presented at the 18th SHAPS (School of Hawaiian, Asian and Pacific Studies) Graduate Student Conference. She received a cash award of $150 from the Center for Philippine Studies for her paper titled, "Transformation and Recognition in Jose Rizal's Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo."
Beredo’s paper is on the Philippine national hero and his novels’ critique of colonialism.
