Did you know: Josefa Llanes Escoda

Today, Sept. 20, is the 115th birth anniversary of civic leader and war heroine Josefa Llanes Escoda. Known as the “Florence Nightingale of the Philippines,” she established the Girl Scouts of the Philippines and founded the Boy’s Town for the underprivileged boys of Manila. An active member of the suffrage movement in the Philippines, she was also a social worker and former head of the National Federation of Women’s Clubs. She was believed to have been executed by the Japanese on suspicion of being a guerilla sympathizer. A street in Ermita was named after her. Schatzi Quodala, Inquirer Research