HSc group assisting Tanging Yaman Foundation receives an ASCEND Excellence Award

This year’s ASCEND Excellence Award for College Coursework Senior Project was given to fourth year BS Health Sciences students, Beatrice Nicole Almazan, Myka Angela Candelaria, Louise Martina Estevez, Trisha Gabriel Lemoncito, Don Ferdinand Santiago, Caitin Beatriz Tan, Mariel Aurea Villafranca, for their research entitled, “StaROps: A Standardized Relief Operations Database for Tanging Yaman Foundation”.

Their faculty advisers are Dr Norman Dennis E Marquez and Ms Vanessa T Siy Van. Their partner community is Tanging Yaman Foundation.

Their group was awarded for their outstanding demonstration of how technology and collaboration can transform relief operations. The award was presented during the Ateneo Service Learning Conference (ASLC) and Ateneo Socio-Civic Engagement For National Development (ASCEND) “Beyond the Common Good, Strive for the Common Good” held on 13 June 2025 at Escaler Hall.

StaROps is a student-led initiative developed in collaboration with Tanging Yaman Foundation, a non-profit relief organization. The project introduces two interconnected Google Sheets templates—a Donor Management Tracker and a Relief Distribution Tracker—to streamline the detailed recording of cash and in-kind donations and ensure equitable allocation of goods during disaster response. Students co-created the system through iterative workshops with foundation staff, produced a quick-start digital manual, and conducted an onsite training session to build local capacity. By combining participatory design and accessible technology, StaROps improves data accuracy, accelerates reporting workflows, and fosters sustainable, community-driven relief operations.

Congratulations to the Awardees!

Watch a short video about their project:

The University recognizes students whose work makes a significant impact through the Ateneo Socio-Civic Engagement for National Development (ASCEND). This year, ASCEND honored senior high school, undergraduate, and graduate students based at the Loyola campus and the Ateneo School of Medicine and Public Health whose projects and research outputs demonstrated subject mastery and the capacity for synthetic thinking while meaningfully engaging communities beyond Ateneo in contributing to national development.

The ASCEND Excellence Award is given to outstanding individuals and groups of students whose project or research work demonstrates, in an extraordinary manner, all three of the following:

1. Extraordinary mastery of subject matter and application of synthetic thinking.

2. Deep and extensive engagement with partner communities and/or institutions.

3. Addresses a national development concern in a strongly strategic and/or creative manner with very significant short-term impact on target beneficiaries and/or the potential for significant longer-term impact in promoting the well-being of the greatest number.

You may access the Book of Abstracts here: https://go.ateneo.edu/2025ASLCASCENDBookofAbstracts

Photo courtesy of the 2025 ASCEND Official Photos and StaROps Group