INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines — Angel Ynah Penuaga, a Grade 9 student of Lawang Bato National High School (NHS) in Valenzuela City, said she had read all the digital issues of the Philippine Daily Inquirer from February to May through the InqPlus app.
She took note of important names, places, and events in poring over the digital broadsheet.
“I write and write because that’s the best way I can remember information,” Penuaga said as she showed, quite bashfully, 30 pages of a notebook filled with her jottings.
On Friday, her hard work paid off.
Penuaga was declared the champion of this year’s INQskwela Quiz Bee, besting 24 other contestants from different high schools in Valenzuela City in showing their accumulated knowledge of current events.
Range of articles
Quiz bee question topics covered the range of Inquirer articles, from national and local politics, to world news, sports, business and even lifestyle and entertainment.
Penuaga received prize money of P3,000 and a Samsung A8.0 tablet.
Other winners were first runner-up Jephunneh Rodge Valle of Paso de Blas NHS, second runner-up Irish Carmela Bañez of Vicente P. Trinidad NHS, and third runner-up John Emmanuel Arcega of Justice Eliezer de los Santos NHS.
Each of them won cash prizes of P1,000 to P2,000 and a pocket Wi-Fi, as well as a bundle of Inquirer books and a plushie of Inquirer’s mascot Guyito.
The teachers who trained the winners were each also given P1,000.
All the participating students received certificates and scholarships from online educational platform Artkipelago.
‘Joy of reading’
Present at Friday’s award ceremony held at Valenzuela City School of Mathematics and Science were Roy Raul Mendiola, Inquirer’s national sales manager-distribution division; Connie Kalagayan, the newspaper’s assistant vice president for corporate affairs and the Inquirer Foundation’s executive director; and corporate affairs officer Bianca Kasilag-Macahilig and business development officer Akiko de la Cruz also of the Inquirer.
The other attendees included officials of the Valenzuela Schools Division Office (VSDO): Meliton Zurbano, division superintendent; Leilanie Mendoza, education program supervisor of the VSDO’s Araling Panlipunan program; and Filmore Caballero, chief education supervisor of the VSDO’s Curriculum Implementation Division.
The INQskwela Quiz Bee was one of the culminating activities of the foundation’s INQskwela project, which aims to promote readership and news literacy among students and teachers.
In the foundation’s partnership with the city government of Valenzuela, a total of 26 public high schools in the city were given access to InqPlus for four months starting Feb. 14.
“This project is very relevant and timely, especially now that fake news, disinformation, and misinformation have been prevalent on different platforms,” Mendoza said in her remarks, addressing the Inquirer officers who attended the ceremony.
“The program honed our learners not just to be regularly updated with news from trusted and reliable sources, such as the Inquirer, but they also developed to be critical thinkers and active readers — questioning what they see especially on social media based on what they read on Inquirer,” she added.
“And most importantly, INQskwela brought back the joy of reading newspapers — even digitally — through the Inquirer,” Mendoza also said.
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