Asian Journal- The Filipino-American Community Newspaper

A Purposeful Commitment to Revolutionizing Education in RP

TWO Filipinos from Bohol are among the seven individuals to receive the Ramon Magsaysay Award, considered to be Asia’s equivalent to the Nobel Prize.

Dr. Christopher C. Bernido and Dr. Ma. Victoria Carpio-Bernido, president and principal of the Research Center for Theoretical Physics in Bohol are being recognized for their innovative way of teaching science in the Philippines.

"Their purposeful commitment to both science and nation, ensuring innovative, low-cost, and effective basic education even under Philippine conditions of great scarcity and daunting poverty," according to the foundation’s website when they made their announcement earlier this week.

The other awardees include the three term Mayor of Hiroshima, Japan Tadatoshi Akiba who campaigns for nuclear disarmament; Newspaper photographer Huo Daishan from China, Pan Yue, vice minister at the Ministry of Environmental Protection, and Fu Qiping, a village chief in Zheijiang province also from China; and AHM Noman Khan from Bangladesh, who designed a program to help the handicap in Bangladesh.

Each will receive a cash prize of $50,000 (P2.27 million) each – or $25,000 if the award is shared, a certificate and a medallion bearing the likeness of the late President.

"The Magsaysay awardees of 2010 are seven remarkable individuals deeply engaged in reinventing the future for a better Asia, tapping into and strengthening the power of community," said Carmencita T. Abella, president of the Ramon Magsaysay Awards Foundation. "Working on critical issues that impact not only their respective countries, but indeed, all of Asia, they are showing how commitment, competence, and collaborative leadership can truly transform individual lives and galvanize community action."

Named after popular Philippine president Ramon Magsaysay, who died in a plane crash in 1957, the award is given each year to persons who address issues of human development in Asia with courage and creativity, and in doing so have made contributions which have transformed their societies for the better.

This year the awardees will be conferred the Magsaysay Award on August 31, 2010 at the Cultural Center of the Philippines.

A total of 42 Filipinos have been awarded the prize.

The Filipino winners, the Bernido couple, told the Philippine Daily Inquirer that they were surprised and humbled when they found out they were to receive the Magsaysay award.

"At the same time it brought a sense of responsibility that we have to live up to expectations," said Christopher Bernido to the Inquirer.

The Bernidos – who came from privileged backgrounds – both earned their doctorate degrees in physics from the State University of New York. In the 1980’s, they headed the National Institute of Physics at the University of the Philippines and were university awardees for teaching and research excellence.

They stood at the top of their profession and were well respected in the world community of physicists, according to the foundation officials.

In 1999, the Bernidos surprised many of their colleagues by moving to the poor, remote municipality of Jagna, in Bohol province, to run an old, struggling high school owned by Christopher’s mother.

Christopher said it was not just filial duty that led both of them to devote themselves to the Central Visayan Institute Foundation (CVIF), as the school’s president and principal, respectively. The CVIF was a small school of about 500 mostly poor students.