Children ages 5 to 17 from Barangay Baraka, Norzagaray, Bulacan will be the recipients of specially-designed face masks to commemorate National Children’s Month in November, through a partnership between Food for the Hungry Philippines (FHP) and the De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde.
Barangay Baraka, with a population of 548 according to the 2020 census, has the age group 5 to 9 years old as the highest population. Those aged 14 and below comprise of at least 37 percent of the town’s residents.
To raise awareness on the importance of wearing face masks and following health protocols especially now that schoolchildren have resumed limited face-to-face classes nationwide, the project MODA for the Better: Facing the Future Together was organized by the Mark of Designers Alliance (MoDA), the professional student organization of the Fashion Design and Merchandising program of the college.
Fashion designer-educator Trina Peñaflorida guided the students in developing their respective concepts from scratch in a specialized workshop on basic mask construction and computer-aided design (CAD).
Out of over 120 participating young style innovators, Year Burst by budding artist Andrei Valera stood out among all the finished outputs. His winning design exhibits an explosion of pigments that depict the spirit for the Year of the Tiger 2022. Year Burst was then produced for distribution to the chosen barangay.
“The tiger symbolizes the strength everyone has for having gone through the past years no matter how difficult,” Valera shared. “The colors represent the blazing energy one must have going forward.”
