The greatest adventure of our life so far (or the story of how we won an international award in Europe and the mad and crazy struggle of it all)

by Raia Jennifer Dela Pena-Landicho

Part 1:

Who would have thought that in a matter of months, our life would change so drastically and go upside down like some roller coaster ride? That is exactly how I feel about us winning the Natasa Prize in the World Young Reader Prize given by the WAN-IFRA (World Organization of Newspapers and Publishers).

Last June, we received an email from Ms. Aralynn Mcmane. She introduced herself as an executive director of a department in the World Organization of Newspapers and Publishers (WAN-IFRA) and invited us to join an annual competition given by their organization. This year, she said, there is a special category called the Natasa Prize to be given to newspaper printing plants that advocate teaching journalism to the youth.

Of course, Sinag printing has become well known for its social responsibility program, the Sinag Journalism Training Seminars, and our Sinag JTS was a perfect fit for the Natasa Prize category. And yet, who’d have thought there was a competition for such an endeavor?

My husband, the perennial skeptic, thought it was another email phishing scam. Keeping that warning in mind, we did our research first before answering Ms. Mcmane’s email. Of course, all our research told us that this was, in fact, a big and prestigious international organization we were dealing with and we immediately went to work creating the power point presentation that was to be our entry for the Natasa Prize.

We submitted our program entry a few days before June 30, WAN-IFRA’s deadline for the competition. We then got an acknowledgement from Mcmane and her staff and were told that we’d find out the result of the competition by late August. That was that. I wrote a short blog about joining the contest, I felt then that it was already such a privilege to have been invited to join the competitions but never thought about winning it. I remember daydreaming about winning and imagining going to Vienna but these were daydreams and I soon forgot about the Natasa Prize as we did work on various things, including the 3^rd Sinag JTS last July.

Around the third week of August we started waiting for any kind of email announcement from WAN-IFRA and when no emails came, we assumed that somebody else won and forgot about it since it was a busy month for us at the press.

Then one morning, I was still upstairs when I heard the girls (our assistants that is) screaming downstairs. My first thought was perhaps an ax murderer got into the office but since the screams sounded happy enough, I thought maybe something else. As if on cue, of course, they burst into our room and showed me a paper – apparently Aralynn Mcmane’s personal congratulatory email. WE WON TOP PRIZE for the Natasa Award!!!

Oh! that day was such a dream. Probably the happiest day of my life – barring the day I gave birth to my son, my wedding day, and the day I found out about passing the UPCAT, that is. J It didn’t really sink in at first. I read the words but I didn’t really feel it was real when we first found out. I remember taking a shower that morning and looking at my reflection in the mirror, I was wearing a silly and slightly stupid looking smile, it’s the kind of smile dumbfounded people must wear all the time. :) TO BE CONTINUED...