Watching documentaries and seeing the plight of fishermen in the provinces made me realize how some of our fisherfolk's practices are not sustainable. We consume quite a lot of sardines, as it is one of the most affordable food items we have that is properly kept, canned and lasts a long while. In a 2017 survey, they listed 9 out of 10 pinoys actually consume it.
As commercial fishing boats become a norm, overfishing is becoming a huge problem. The amount of sardines they take out from the sea just wouldn't be able to sustain production. Add to that climate issues, and it's a tragedy waiting to happen.
Century Pacific Food Inc. who produces various sardine brands like 555, Lucky 7, Fresca, and well loved brand Ligo launched a campaign called "Sustendido Bulan" at Bulan in Sorsogon. This aims to make sure that sourcing raw ingredients including fish is sourced sustainably. They also want to make sure fisherfolk are educated about processes and make sure the long term supply of it.
They also went over and beyond by doing community work with their products, teaching nutrition to empower the community and have an even better resource management practices in this location. CPFI and Ligo wants to enable they understand that there could be a supply chain that could benefit them all. Through various partnerships, education and innovation, they would be able to balance the needs of people to bring value from the sea to Filipino homes too.
Putting their call "Lamang ka sa Ligo" is a practice that gets both consumers and suppliers at a beneficial standpoint. Something that would not harm the planet and not have overfishing at these locations.
As of now, they have trained 250 fishermen and women about sustainability. They also accredited 500 families as suppliers. They also now created over 850 posts to employ them in plants across the region and had 1075 kids benefit from their school feeding programs. They also noted how rejection rates of fish went from 13 to only 3% and hopefully have eliminated resource strain because of the "Sustenido Bulan" efforts. They are following UN Sustainable Development goals and hope to maintain these gains in the coming years. We fervently hope this becomes beneficial for future generations and be practiced at different locations. It doesn't have to be in one place of course!
Ligo certainly brings value not only from the sea, but to Filipino homes nationwide!
After a grueling match on LAN by these illustrious list of ESports teams, fans of DOTA 2 and Valorant were treated to a lovely finals at Robinsons Galleria in Cebu for the Predator League 2025 Philippine Finals. Despite the hectic schedule and some inexperience of some teams in a faster environment, they managed to play with high level teams and win 250,000 pesos as champions of the Asia Pacific Predator League 2025 Grand Finals. They've got a 1 Million peso pot to share after all.
DOTA 2 was quite exciting for teams Execration and Ivory, but in the end, the experience that Execration had made it an overwhelming affair on the map. Kill rates were at 7.5, and assists were at 10.5, so imagine how much time they spent in it. For Valorant, DLSU's Valorant Esports tried to take a jab at ZOL ESports, but they got swept 2 games. This means Execration, Ivory and ZOL Esports will fly for the championships in KL next year. Team Secret will also be there to play for the country, something like an honorary invite for a top tier team that plays on the world stage.
If you want more updates about these ESports teams, make sure you follow their social channels because they'll be posting more of these in the coming months. January will be very busy.
From a gamer spectator such as me, I always knew the Philippines would fare well in the recent regional competition, Acer's Predator League 2024. At the Mall of Asia Arena in Pasay City Philippines, fans flocked to this venue to watch DOTA 2 and Valorant country representatives (in Asia Pacific) as they battle it out to see who's best in this region.
There were over 26 world class teams who were raring to do their best in the 2 day event. The prelims was fun albeit being a bit uneasy for some teams because they had only one match to qualify for the next round. It certainly wasn't easy to adjust that fast but those who did took advantage of the format and won their respective rounds. It was also fun to also talk to the eSports athletes before they went into the actual match, here's some of them on video!
The international eSports teams also talked about their experience doing the tournament here in Manila. They did expect matches would be hard since some of them are Tier 1 franchise teams, and a lot of them wanted to experience what it feels like being in a match with them. Although some of them lost their matches, they learned a lot in the process and promise to be back with an even greater team soon.
Aside from that, executives from different regions went on to tell us how it's been actually very beneficial to run these events in their respective countries. To say the least, business has been good and they are planning to do the regional Predator League in Malaysia next year. They also want to do it bigger and better in the coming years as they find big value in knowing how name recall plays in the gaming industry and that's exactly why they're number 1 in the market!
PABLO was super good!
The Asia Pacific Predator League was also the best in entertainment. World class Filipino performers showed up and got us partying at the start, between games and in the finale. On day 1 alone, I got my dose of Valorant fare as Ylona Garcia who sang "Entertain Me" when NEON was launched as a character, oh how I love her! Aside from that, Urbanddub, Al James and Donny Pangilinan joined in the fun plus a full Valorant game with SB19 and other Acer influencers made the evening extra epic! Asia's Popstar Royalty Sarah Geronimo also ended the day with her performance, people were at awe!
Day 2 had Josh Cullen, bands Sandwich and Spongecola, Pablo (who did a new single on stage) and KZ Tandingan give us the absolute best in Philippine talents, it was like a full blown concert with the games on the finale day.
And in the end, it was a sweet day for the Philippines as Team Secret won the Valorant championship and Blacklist International Rivalry won the DOTA2 championship. Both teams from the Philippines won 65,000 dollars and their own Predator Shield. Initially, BOOM Esports was actually favored to challenge Team Secret, but Japan's FAV Gaming surprised them all. They got 20,000 dollars together with Execration (for DOTA2), and BOOM Esports + Team Flash got 3rd Place with a 7,500 pot each. Team Aster and IHC Esports got the same for DOTA2. Intel MVP awards went to Jeremy “Jremy” Cabrera (for Valorant) and Marc Polo “Raven”Fausto (for DOTA2), getting a prize of 10,000 dollars too.
If you're up to it, some of the performances are already up on my TikTok account so just search @kumagcow there, and some of the country interviews were done live on my FB page (just search kumagcow) as it's all there!