Teen star Daniel Padilla was among the nominees in this year’s Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards (KCA).
The 19-year-old actor was nominated in the Favorite Asian Act category, along with Indonesian girl group JKT48, Malaysian YouTube sensation Jinnyboy, and Singaporean actor Tosh Zhang.
At the end of the glitzy and slimy 28th edition of KCA held at the Forum in Inglewood, California, Daniel failed to win the coveted orange blimp. The award was won by the Jakarta-based girl group who happened to have a bigger fan base.
Fans of the young actor took it to social media to air their sentiments over the result. Some even went overboard expressing how infuriated they were that their idol did not win the coveted blimp. To appease his ardent fans, Daniel and his mother Karla Estrada told them that being nominated in Nickelodeon KCA is already an achievement in itself.
For consolation, the teen actor won the “Global Slime Star” award after beating out British boy band Union J, Mexican boy band CD9, Brazilian singer-composer Luan Santana and teenage YouTube Jamie Curry who represented Australia and New Zealand.
The competition, which was conducted by Nickelodeon for the first time, was held on Twitter where each nominee has his or her own respective hashtag. In Daniel’s case it was #SlimeDanielKCA. Daniel’s Twitter fans tweeted the hashtag many times over making the young actor win the competition and get slimed in the end. The winner was announced a day before the Nick Awards but no blimp was handed out to the “teen king.”
The Favorite Asian Act plum is an elusive award for Filipino artists. Anne Curtis and Sarah Geronimo also failed to win the same award in 2014 and 2013, respectively. In 2012, Charice Pempengco became the first Filipino to get nominated and eventually won the award. Charice took home the famous orange blimp when she was still a hot YouTube sensation touring the world to promote her music. Sure, Charice’s fans knew exactly how to cast their votes online. It is something that Daniel’s fans are yet to discover.
Empowering underserved Filipinos
Tech giant Intel partners with Department of Science and Technology-Information and Communication Technology Office (DOST-ICTO) in a nationwide multi-stakeholder digital literacy movement formed to make the entire Philippines digitally literate.
Called DigiBayanihan, the movement aims to promote digital literacy amongst all Filipinos to empower them with skills to harness the benefits of technology to improve their quality of life. While focused on all Filipinos, special emphasis is given to the underserved.
“Our main goal, is of course, to make every Filipinos, all 100 million of them be digitally literate. We will not stop until we reach our goal,” Calum Chisholm, Intel Philippines Country Manager, told The Standard in a sit-down interview.
The Intel official furthered that the main challenge the movement is facing right now is that, people have the devices to access important information online but most of them do not know how to use them.
“As a driving force of this initiative, we will continue to lend our expertise in IT education among the youth and technology leadership to ensure that we reach the digitally excluded members of the population.”
Chisholm said that DigiBayanihan has already achieved one of the goals they first set in mid-2014 when it was introduced, and that is to put digital literacy at the forefront of the national agenda for human and economic development. This year, it targets to touch up to five million Filipinos through its digital literacy and volunteering initiatives.
The movement also plans to enhance its partnerships with other stakeholders, in particular, the private sector, civil society organizations, academic institutions and international agencies, to include more National Government Agencies such as National Youth Commission and TESDA.
Bettina Quimson, DOST-ICTO deputy executive director, explained that DigiBayanihan is very much aligned to the agency’s Tech4Ed, eFilipino and free Public WiFi projects, which all aim to harness the use of ICT to achieve growth and development of communities in the Philippines.
From its launch in mid-2014, DigiBayanihan has successfully trained over 100, 000 Filipinos. This year, it is expected that DigiBayanihan will exponentially increase its reach through volunteerism. Volunteers will be mobilized to organize and implement the local activities that will bring digital literacy