Patch Magtanong donates PPE

Beauty queen Patricia Magtanong donated through Panday Bayanihan personal protective equipment (PPE) to frontliners battling the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

According to the 26-year-old lawyer, she delivered the items to the National Center for Mental Health and the Philippine Children’s Medical Center.

The Miss International Philippines 2019 also thanked her friend and Grace Poe’s son, Brian Poe Llamanzares.

“Also working with Senator Poe’s office to craft and promote legislation pro-women and children. Recently, we filed Senate Bill No. 1410 which abolishes a penal provision legitimizing honor killings against women and children. Looking forward to more!” she wrote as the caption to her Instagram post.

Grace thanked Patch for her good deed.

“I’d like to thank my fellow UP alum Bb. Pilipinas International 2019 Patch Magtanong for her donation of PPEs. Through donors like @patchmag, we are able to help more hospitals in need. The @PandayBayanihan team, led by @heyitsbrianpoe, visited the Philippine Children’s Medical Center—which caters to kids infected with #Covid19 to distribute the PPEs donated by Atty. Magtanong,” wrote the daughter of late action star Fernando Poe Jr.

Ara Mina donates truckload of rice

Actress Ara Mina continues to help people during this public health crisis. She revealed on Instagram that their #TEAMDARVE recently donated a truckload of rice to people in the province of Laguna, Quezon City, Rizal, Caloocan, and Angeles, Pampanga.

“Ang munting tulong na ito ng aming #TEAMDARVE ay sana malayo ang marating,” she wrote as caption to photo of herself in front of the truckload of rice.

“Salamat sa lahat ng LGU’S at volunteers na tumulong sa pamamahagi ng aming nakayanan… Kaya natin ito! Tulong-tulong tayo!”

Prior to this, she prepared and gave milk and choco drink to kids in Caloocan, Malabon, and Binangonan, Rizal through the Goodwill Heart Foundation.

Early this month, Ara also launched a fundraiser to fight COVID-19.

“To celebrate my birthday, I’ve started another fund drive in collaboration with Pia Gladys Perey-Wälte, an International Fashion Designer. The project aims to raise funds to produce Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for our medical frontliners,” she shared at the time.

On her birthday May 9, Ara gave away 200 packs of food and drinks to Commonwealth Hospital and Medical Center.

Baguio City artists join forces to make PPEs for garbage collectors

The Covid-19 pandemic has had a dismal effect on our economy. Lots of workers have been displaced as businesses have been put on hold. Among those badly hit is the art community. With lockdowns and quarantines in place, exhibits and cultural shows have been postponed, if not canceled. Artisan stores and shops have also been closed.

But in Baguio City, the country’s first ever Creative City as awarded by UNESCO, local artists are extending their hands to those most vulnerable. Although most of them are also struggling financially, these artists have been using their skills and talents, coming together to provide food assistance for medical frontliners and to create personal protective equipment (PPE) for the city’s garbage collectors.

This initiative is headed by sculptor and fashion designer Laydeh Alberto, working together with performance artist Francis Siapno a.k.a Miz Kiki Krunch. In a conversation with Manila Bulletin Lifestyle, these two creatives share how Baguio City’s local artists have come together to make this project possible and what inspires them to do it.

Delicious food, relief packs, and PPEs

Laydeh owns Café Cueva, a food store at Ili-Likha Artists Village. Under quarantine, the store has been closed, only available for online and take-out orders. With access to a kitchen that serves mouthwatering food, she decided to provide delicious meals to medical frontliners. While doing this, she thought of the garbage collectors tirelessly working around the city.

“Cafe Cueva has been feeding frontliners from the get-go,” she says. “But I wanted to do more. I can see that the focus is on helping medical workers but we somehow neglect the garbage collectors. They’ve been working continuously even in the ECQ, rain or shine. They work unprotected, to think that they are the ones handling hazardous wastes from hospitals.”

With a limited budget, she looked for ways she could turn her vision of helping these workers into reality. She came across Miz Kiki’s donation drive and that was how their collaboration began. “The café’s sale is down and as much as I wanted to help, I didn’t have the funding for it,” says Laydeh. “That’s when I saw Miz Kiki’s fundraising and I pitched to her my ideas.”

Unexpected collaboration

Kiki’s original plan was to hold a one-man drag queen show for the celebration of her 30th birthday this year. But thanks to Covid-19, this plan was canceled, so she found ways to divert this project into something more useful and helpful.

“I had initial sponsors for my supposed show. Then naisip ko na yung ibibigay sana nila na sponsorship for the show, i-laan ko muna dito sa donation drive since ito naman mas kailangan (I thought of using that sponsorship money to set up a donation drive since it was what was more urgently needed),” says the drag show performer. “We raised around P90,000. We used the initial P60,000 to provide relief packs for the jeepney drivers of Baguio and La Trinidad, Benguet. We also gave to utility workers of the city hall and University of the Philippines-Baguio. The remaining budget, that’s what we’ve been using to make PPEs for garbage collectors.”

According to Kiki, some artists, who didn’t have cash to donate, sent their crafts and products instead for her to sell. The money from the sale has gone to the donation drive. Meanwhile, some used their social media influence to inform people about the fundraising project.

With all these efforts combined, Laydeh has been able to start making PPEs for the garbage collectors. Due to limited access to materials, she used umbrella textile she bought from a local shop. Using an old sewing machine, the fashion designer has been tirelessly sewing these PPEs by herself. The empty Ili-Likha, owned by National Artist for Film Kidlat Tahimik, serves as her studio and production house.

“I’ve been doing it alone, from cutting to sewing,” she says. “We’re aiming to give PPEs to garbage collectors of five barangays. That is equal to 30 PPEs. My thought is, if we protect them, we protect ourselves. It really goes hand in hand.”

Kiki and Laydeh say they are doing all of these because they appreciate the efforts of garbage collectors to serve the community. “They are so brave,” Kiki says. “We’re truly grateful for their service. They are too passionate about their job and I hope they have the same passion when it comes to taking care of themselves. They are frontliners and we need them now more than ever.”

Philippine Abaca world demand rises for raw material of Personal Protective Equipment

The world demand for Philippine Abaca is rising as raw material for Personal Protective Equipment of frontliners in the battle against COVID-19.

Abaca, a very important product indigenous to the Philippines, has made the country a leading abaca producer with around 90,000 farmers. Abaca exports are worth as much as Php 4.7B, representing an average of 85% of the world’s requirements.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the abaca industry was beginning to experience a resurgence due to increased demand for renewable, sustainable, and biodegradable products.

In fact, Abaca was identified as potential material for spacesuits in a study led by De La Salle University. Filipino chemists developed abaca-based woven fabric to filter water pollutants while scientists also invented the Abaca-lined Swan Amphibious Vehicle for disaster rescue and relief operations.

Amidst the global health emergency, Abaca fibers have suddenly become a very important and sought-after commodity.

Many governments and manufacturers from all over the world scamper to produce safe, disposable, and reusable medical garments like face masks, lab gowns, shoe covers, head covers or hoods, and PPEs in an effort to provide their health care workers with safe and suitable protection so they can properly take care of COVID-19 patients.

The Philippine Fiber Industry Development Authority (Philfida) vouches for Abaca as the strongest and the longest natural fiber in the world. The organization says there is no substitute for it simply because of its unique morphological, chemical, and physical properties. And they consider “the abaca plant as a gift from God to the Filipino people.”

Philfida Executive Director Kennedy Costales said, “Before COVID-19, face masks, gowns, shoe covers, head covers, and PPE only represented less than 1 percent of the total annual abaca production in the Philippines.”

Also known as Manila Hemp, Abaca is processed as fine fibers used in medical garbs and garments, clothing, ropes, shoes, bags, mats, and also for food packaging. Abaca fibers are also beginning to play a major role in the paper industry. The fibers can even be used to produce high-quality paper such as in Japan banknotes which contain approximately 30% abaca.

Countries like England, Spain, France, Germany, China, Japan, and the USA are starting to turn away from forest products as a source of raw materials for their paper mills and are beginning to look at environment-friendly abaca fibers – adding to the increase abaca demand in these countries.