The Philippine Star
January 21, 2020 | 12:00am
MANILA, Philippines — The Philstar Media Group’s Operation Damayan continued to be at the receiving end of the generosity and goodwill of people who have been sending in donations for Taal evacuees.
Anthony Trillo, chairman of Crown Peak Estate Developers Inc. in Subic Freeport, visited The Philippine STAR office yesterday to hand over a P1-million donation for Damayan’s Taal relief operations.
Trillo said he was aware of Operation Damayan’s long-time advocacy, being a personal friend of Damayan and Philippine STAR founding chairman Betty Go Belmonte, and he was happy to see that the advocacy of helping others in times of calamity is being sustained by STAR president and CEO Miguel Belmonte.
Alice Eduardo, president and CEO of Sta. Elena Construction and Development Corp., also sent in a donation for P500,000.
“Please accept my humble contribution to The Philippine STAR’s relief efforts in Taal. I admire your efforts to reach out to the victims and make a difference in their lives during this difficult time,” she said.
Belmonte said the response to the fund-raising has been overwhelming, and that this can only bode well for evacuees whose lives were disrupted by the eruption of Taal Volcano last week.
The Damayan fund drive now totaled P6.53 million, including the latest donations from the following: Deflector Door Visor, P20,000; Lim Siok Kim Go, P10,000; Anonymous, P10,000; boxes of canned goods, biscuits, toiletries and cases of bottled water from Angelo Raphael Cabanero and family; Anonymous, P5,000; and 590 shirts from Cylcon Synthetic Oil EU.
In a meeting with the Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office in Batangas last Saturday, Operation Damayan head Emie Cruz was told that assistance was much-needed in underserved and overpopulated centers in the fourth-class municipalities, notably San Luis and San Pascual, where Damayan will be focusing its relief efforts.
This early, San Luis mayor Danilo Medina expressed gratitude to the Damayan team for reaching out to them, lamenting that relief in their barangays was hard to come by since their area was not readily accessible.
