Meralco, MediaQuest ink deal to boost info literacy among employees

MANILA, Philippines — MediaQuest Holdings Inc. and Meralco on Monday signed a memorandum of agreement for THINKaMuna Pilipinas, the media company’s media and information literacy (MIL) advocacy campaign. The partnership aims to empower the power company’s stakeholders, starting from its employees, to be discerning consumers of information. Present in the signing ceremony for MediaQuest were Victorico Vargas, president and CEO; Rolando Santos, chief people officer; and Christopher Daniel Lizo, chief financial officer. Representing Meralco were Ronnie Aperocho, EVP and chief operating officer; Hans Joachim Montenegro, FVP and chief human resources officer and head of corporate services and Joe Zaldarriaga, VP and head of corporate communications. “We are literally advocating, much more energetically now, the need to propagate awareness and to practice media and information literacy measures by individuals, families and organizations and companies like Meralco and MediaQuest,” said Ramon Isberto, corporate affairs and communications consultant at MediaQuest. In his message, Vargas expounded on the importance of the THINKaMuna Pilipinas campaign: “THINKaMuna is not just a word. It can be a culture in the organization. It can be a culture in society. It can be a culture in the environment that we live in. It can be the Philippine culture that we direly need.” Zaldarriaga shared his firm belief in the importance of initiatives such as THINKaMuna, especially with misinformation and disinformation affecting people’s lives. “The habits we cultivate today will shape the kind of digital environment that we will be facing in the future,” he said. Aperocho also expressed his appreciation for THINKaMuna and the recently formed partnership. “This will be a good platform to educate our stakeholders, especially our customers, that before they share and click any information about Meralco, they can validate, they can check the accuracy of these narratives,” he said. In an interview, Isberto said the partnership aims to sharpen the MIL capabilities of both MediaQuest and Meralco employees by developing in-house or internal educational campaigns. “We’ll discuss how to do that in terms of promoting MIL within the employee workforce of each of the respective organizations,” Isberto said. Montenegro also shared that the initiative can help Meralco employees become good ambassadors to the company, especially given how current events have affected the energy landscape. “We want to start this early with our own employee base to really get the word out based on facts. Because undoubtedly, our employees will also face questions, but they also have questions themselves,” he said. “We need to answer those with facts, with the correct information, and then hope that spreads accordingly,” he added.