SUNSTAR’S BADAYOS, LIM WIN 2 OF 5 SAVE THE CHILDREN AWARDS
SunStar Cebu journalists Cherry Ann T. Lim and Alex Badayos won two of five prizes at stake in the Save the Children Media Awards 2017 held at the Silver Lotus Events Place in Quezon City last Tuesday night.
Managing editor Lim won the Most Outstanding Article award for “Wasted Children,” a special report that examined, among others, which towns in Cebu needed help in dealing with malnutrition. In six Cebu towns, six to nearly 10 percent of all children under five years old were too thin for their height. SunStar Cebu published the three-part special report last July.
Badayos, who is SunStar Cebu and Super Balita’s chief photographer, won the prize for Most Outstanding Photograph. “Food for Tot” is a black-and-white image of a child eating a bowl of porridge.
Award-giving body Save the Children Philippines works with the global Save the Children movement that operates in at least 120 countries.
“Save the Children believes that all children have the right to fair and equal access to nutritious food. We know that the rate of stunting of 33 percent is largely due to inequality of access to nutritious food, long periods of hunger, and a lack of nutrition during the first 1,000 days,” the group said in a statement.
In 2015, Save the Children launched the Lahat Dapat Cam- paign to raise public awareness on child hunger and malnutrition in the Philippines.
In this interview, Lim and Badayos share how they came up with their award-winning work.
How challenging was it to research and write “Wasted Children”?
Lim: My sources were generally cooperative. Usually, they have no choice but to cooperate when a journalist calls. One tried to influence the tone of my writing. Another prefaced my interview with him with a lecture on the sins he said another journalist from SunStar Cebu had committed against him years ago. What proved a greater challenge was looking for emaciated children to photograph. Having been a skinny child myself, I didn’t consider the children presented to me thin enough to be considered malnourished.
In terms of the level of difficulty in grasping the concepts and the gas mileage and research effort required, this story was no different from the other special stories I had written. When I am writing a feature, I am like a woman possessed: I don’t eat. I don’t sleep. I don’t accept dinner dates.
What finding or realization struck you the most while you worked on this special report?
Lim: That the cognitive impact of chronic malnutrition is ir- reversible by the age of five; and that the malnutrition of others has a financial impact on everyone, not just on the families of the poor.
How can people help address child hunger and malnutrition?
Lim: By focusing not just on the care of pregnant women and the feeding of malnourished children, but also on addressing the poverty in their families and other societal factors that led to their malnutrition in the first place.
Alex, what went through your mind as you took this photo? Where and how did you find this child?
It was just an ordinary coverage of the Talisay City Government’s “Halad sa Barangay” program, where the City gave services to residents of the mountain barangay of Manipis. One of the services was a feeding program, giving free porridge to infants and pre-school children. A child caught my attention. After her mother had fed her, the child asked for more and she was (briefly) left alone, eating by herself. I captured the expression on her face. She was perspiring, perhaps because of the hot porridge, and her nose was runny.
When I look at the child in the photo, I think of my own child who is also registered under the nutrition program of the Lawaan Elementary School. We’ve had to deal with the problem of making my children avoid eating more junk food.
You’ve both been winning journalistic awards left and right. How do you do that?
Lim: It’s a team effort. First, I work hard. Then, my colleagues pray hard that I will win. And I also have a most understanding editor-in-chief, meaning she puts up with all my crazy ideas for a special report.
Badayos: This is my fifth national award. Some of my pictures that won in the contests depicted the expression on the faces of the subjects and drew positive human interest.
Winning in a photo contest is not all about skills and experience. It is also about discipline, like waking up early, and patience, like waiting for the right subject, as well as for the right moment and expression.
But most of all, your talent is not acquired. God Himself gave it to you.