Kraft Cheez Whiz Palamantasan in Lapu-lapu Central Elementary School Cebu

July is the month of nutrition. In line with this, Kraft Cheez Whiz, one of the most-loved cheese brands in the country in partnership with the Department of Education has come up with Palamantasan-the first interschool competition among grade school students nationwide in a quest for nutrition education for the schoolchildren to learn. To teach them is already something. But to revolutionize it into a nationwide interschool competition for them to learn is something else.

Last Saturday, July 17, 2010, Lapu-lapu Central Elementary School was one of the many schools to compete. Winners from this eliminations will go to the Regional eliminations, and succeedingly to the National Finals. Kraft Cheez Whiz chose to do a school-based program to further raise public consciousness. Alex Dan Tacderas, Category Manager for Cheese and Spoonables, Kraft Foods Philippines shares, "School is second to home where children learn basic lessons and values, that is why we wanted to direct our cause and execute our program in schools–in both an enjoyable and educational way."

Also, Tacderas shared a story about 'One can make a difference'. The story goes like this.

There was a young man walking on the shore one day and as he walked, he saw many starfishes drifted into the shore. He was walking until he saw a young boy throwing the starfishes back into the sea. The young man approached the boy and asked, "What are you doing?". The young boy replied, "I'm trying to save the starfishes so I'm throwing them back to the sea". The young man laughed and said, "You're just wasting your time, nothing can make a difference". But the young boy ignored the young man and still continued to throw the starfishes back. He held one starfish, threw it into the sea and said, "There, I made a difference".

Each one of us can make a difference indeed. Simple actions can change the world. Just for an instance, eating healthy foods for proper nutrition can draw many to do the same.

I remember how we celebrated Nutrition month during my elementary years. Parade of fruits and vegetables with the drum and buggle corps is always there. We had singing competition, declamation, essay writing contest, poster-making contest, and cooking competition related to proper nutrition. I used to be good at declamation so luckily I won. There are only three words that comes into my mind whenever I hear the words Nutrition month, and that is Go, Grow, and Glow.

During Cheez Whiz Palamantasan ng Sarap, they have also conducted contests in line with the National Nutrition Month’s Celebration. These contests include Cheez Whiz Cheering Competition which each team’s presentation must include the Cheez Whiz lyrics that can be used as a cheer or chant, the On-The-Spot Essay Writing Contest in which essays must be in English and would revolve in the question: “Anu-ano ang natutunan mo tungkol sa palaman at nutrisyon?”, the Sabayang Bigkas in which all the members of the group must memorize their given piece in not more than 20 minutes presentation, the Sandwich Art which is making sandwiches in its artistic way by the use of Kraft Cheez Whiz, and the Jarchitecture Contest in which the art work must portray the theme: “Good Nutrition”.

Winners of the said contests are as follows:

Sabayang Bigkas

Coaches: Sheila R. Dumagil, Lucena S. Ngujo, Sarah V. Igoy

Teacher / Adviser: Shiela Dumagil, Lucena Ngujo. Delia Anongos, Jessica Hiyas, Sarah Igoy, Dalela Sumalinog

Name of Team: Team Aktibo

Essay Writing Contest

Montessa Despi- Gr. IV -F.L

Jarchitecture Contest

Coaches: Emily Lou Curiba/ Dexter Postrano

Teacher / Adviser: Dexter Postrano, Estrella Marañon

Name of Team: Ch-Wezzy Body Protector

1st Place

Sandwich Art

Dina Mondelo ( mom ) and Zamantha Mondel ( kid)

Coach: Susie T. Yu

Adviser: Verna Alipar

Name of Recipe: Crunchy Cheese Stick Wiches

Cheering Competition

Coaches: Edlynne Baguio and Marian Dungog

Teacher / Adviser: Sarah V. Igoy

Name of Team: S.H.E BRATS

CBS with the host

Over the years, educating children about proper nutrition has been one of the primary advocacies of many institutions. Palamantasan revolutionizes the learning experience of school children in corporate-sponsored nutrition education.

To know more about this, you can Join Palamantasan and make a pledge. With Palamantasan as a promising project to help children become healthier in more ways than one, the country is continuously given the hope of a better and brighter future.

Photo credit to Jorich Ponio.

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Tim Flach: Going Bats

Photographs by Tim Flach

Bats are among the least anthropomorphised of creatures. Disney brought us a smiling mouse, T.S. Eliot humanised his cats and the British children's TV show "Fingerbobs" even created a friendly scampi. But where are the cute bats? Bats that don't suck blood or get tangled in people's hair and don't embody the Gothic horrors of the night? Bats we can identify with?

Philosopher Thomas Nagel summed up our attitude when he wrote, "Anyone who has spent time in an enclosed space with an excited bat knows what it is to encounter a fundamentally alien form of life."

Yet Tim Flach's photographs make you wonder why humans have been so unwilling to see their own natures reflected in these mammals. Turn his portraits upside down and suddenly you see bats in a new light. As they pose, they look oddly like us.

Topsy-turvy world - Turn a photo of an Australian fruit bat upside
down and it appears to walk like a human

And indeed they are. Bats breastfeed their young, can live for more than 30 years and have wings anatomically equivalent to human hand.

Cheryce Kramer, a cultural historian working with Flach on a book about how we perceive bats, argues that it's their human qualities that make us react as we do.

HUMAN QUALITIES - "I originally intended to do shots of flying bats,"
recalls photographer Tim Flach. "Then I noticed them chatting among
themselves on a branch. They were communicating something, and
 I realized that this was what I should be shooting"

"Those who have looked closely at bats have seen the anthrophomorphic qualities. In the Linnean system of classifying life forms, bats are grouped with primates and humans.The similarities are precisely why we find them so eerie."

Early naturalists were not particularly interested in bats. It was only in the 1930s, when US military scientists began to see them as intriguing machines, that bats underwent an image shift. In 1938 teams developing radar technology recorded bat calls -- pitched beyond the range of the human ear. To prevent confusion when flying in swarms of hundreds of thousands, each bat uses a different frequency so it can distinguish its own echo and avoid becoming disoriented.

At about this time Batman, a comic-book vigilante using scientific knowledge as a weapon, appeared. "The bat was reinterpreted through science," says Kramer.

RELATIONSHIPS - Like humans, many bats pair for life
and most species have only one offspring a year

During World War II, a bizarre study moved things on. In Project X-rays, the US Navy tried to see if incendiary devices attached to Mexican bats could be used to attack German and Japanese cities.

It involved releasing the animals from planes in huge numbers just before dawn. As daylight approached, the bats would look for somewhere to roost - probably crevices under the enemy's rafters. The explosive backpacks would detonate, incinerating the animals and large numbers of civilians. Tests were carried out, but the success of research into the atomic bomb meant the study was abandoned.

Sinister as it was, Project X-ray added greatly to our knowledge of bats. It also led to a further revision of their image. In Britain, bats are now a protected species, and David Attenborough has appeared on television knee-deep in bat guano.

For most people, however, bats still mean Count Dracula and utter panic if one flies into the bedroom (Britain even has a national helpline for those who find themselves in this position). But stare into the faces in Flach's photographs and you begin to feel the daylight of recognition putting the vampire to flight.

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