Two women who have excelled in field of community well being and research and culture and the performing arts are recognized as Baguio City’s 2022 Outstanding Women Leaders (OWLs).
Dr. Rizavel Addawe is this year’s OWL awardee for Community Well Being and for Championing Research on Health Issues. Holding three professorial positions at the University of the Philippines – Baguio, Addawe actively leads the conduct of researches especially on the incidence of critical diseases and its impact in Baguio City.
Aside from researches on dengue, food and air borne diseases, measles and typhoid, her recent initiative for research and analysis study on COVID-19 cases in Baguio City provided vital data for the city’s case management and control prevention measures.
Dr. Addawe also sits as a board member of the Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center.
The other 2022 OWLS awardee is Rebecca Nulud for her remarkable contribution in the promotion of Culture and the Performing Arts.
Nulud is an Executive Council member of the National Committee on Dance of the National Commission for the Culture and the Arts, and a former director and now consultant of the Saint Louis University’s Center for Culture and the Arts (CCA). She founded the Dance Association of Baguio City and is an active official of the Baguio Flower Festival or Panagbenga Festival
Nulud has inspired students and youth in the promotion of Cordillera and Philippine culture through dance and performing arts as depicted in various staging of Panagbenga festival, SLU Lantern parades and other performances and festivities that the SLU – CCA have joined in.
The OWLs – Baguio City headed by its president Dona Digna Rosario with Mayor Benjamin Magalong led the awarding ceremony and honor dinner for the new OWLs at the Newtown Plaza Hotel in March 28 as a highlight of the celebration of March as Kababaihan Festival.
The OWLs – BC, in welcoming their new members, also performed the traditional “Ritual of the OWLs”, which is the crowning or donning of the “bongor” or “dalisdis”, a native strand of beads of Kalinga origin, that is often worn by women of responsibility and a sign of wealth, beauty and of the strongest and fiercest women of Cordillera.
The Search for Outstanding Women Leaders of Baguio is an institutionalized Women’s Month activity of Baguio City since 2006. The OWLs awardees have bonded themselves into the OWLs – BC and have been helping the city government in screening and judging the nominees of the annual search. **JDP/CCD-PIA CAR