Bariles woke up this morning to find an email from Mr. Kenji Solis, a South Cotabateno who works in the Middle East and is the founder of the Pinoy Expat Blog Awards, which he established almost four years ago.
Kenji met the Soccsksargen Bloggers in 2009 when he was in town for a short vacation and they were awed by his determination to push for his advocacy to propagate the use of blogs in informing the country of the Pinoy expat/OFW’s plight abroad and in the process, honoring the best of these blogs written by the expats themselves.
Being a former OFW himself, Bariles has been supportive of PEBA’s causes and in fact has taken part in choosing the Top 10 Pinoy OFW Blogs, or the most noteworthy blogs by Pinoys abroad since 2008, a task which has grown more challenging every year considering the higher number of qualified entries he had to pore through.
Still, reading these blogs every last quarter of the year when it’s time to judge them has been a marvelous ride into the minds and hearts of our fellow Filipinos who have chosen to labor overseas, while leaving their families behind. It has made Bariles more proud of being Pinoy and is recognizant of the fact that the Filipino worker himself is God’s gift to the world, with their good spirits, joyful nature, humility, zealous industry and infectious unwavering faith in the Almighty.
Anyway, here was what Kenji emailed to Bariles.
Bariles was not able to be at the PEBA Awards Night last December 2010 in Manila due to the Blogfest 2010 which he and the Sox Bloggers spearheaded. Still, although belatedly, he is very thankful for this recognition and as long as PEBA needs him, he will always be ready to help in choosing every year’s TOP 10 OFW Blogs.
