PSF awards 250 beneficiaries under the MVP Academic Excellence Award and Employees' Educational Grant

The PLDT-Smart Foundation celebrated a first during the awarding ceremony of the MVP Academic Excellence Award and Employees’ Educational Grant. Beneficiaries this year include not only dependents of employees from PLDT, but also from Smart.

Of the total 250 beneficiaries, 100 are kids of Smartees. They each received P20,000 to help spend for tuition, school supplies, textbooks, uniforms and other educational needs.

PLDT-Smart Foundation President Butch Meily acknowledged the hard work and support of the Human Resources Management and Development Group and the Infinity Business Group for the inclusion of SMART in the awarding of the educational grant this year.

“It took a long time to put this together since there were so many good candidates. You should all be proud of yourselves because you are the cream of the crop, he told the awardees. SMART President and CEO Napoleon L. Nazareno shared that as a beneficiary of an educational grant from grade school to high school, he had to do “some serious studying at an early age” to maintain his scholarship. “It is good to experience early in life the pressure to deliver, to perform well,” he added.

He congratulated not only the kids, but also the parents. “Since the educational grant is open only to employees who meet certain criteria tied in with good performance and limited to their dependents of good academic standing, this is also a way of recognizing employee performance in the workplace and at home, as reflected in your children’s academic standing,” he said.

Like Nazareno, Chief Wireless Advisor Orlando B. Vea knows the value of a scholarship. A “skolar ng bayan” who studied at the University of the Philippines from elementary to college, he shared how he worked his way through college.