All of us join in the hurry-burry created by the Christmas season. A lot of Filipino families take part in this joyous occasion by putting Christmas lights and decorations. The Manila Electric Company (Meralco), the country’s largest power distributor, shares the light and joy this Christmas season by introducing many of its activities for this season. These projects and programs are under the annual Maliwanag and Pasko Chistmasand lighting decor campaign.


For this year, Meralco invited different people to witness the lighting of its Christmas decor and to tour around the Toy Town it created. Under the theme “pagkakaisa” or unity for this year’s campaign, Meralco calls to all its customers to decorate their homes with Christmas lights. This year, Meralco will award the brightest and the best decorated homes all over the Meralco franchise. It will award 9 households with Php 25,000 each. With this, Meralco will donate also the same amount to its partner charitable institution. For this year, these non-profit organizations are Caritas Manila, Laura Vicuna Foundation and Childhope Asia. Some of the households for this year may even be elevated to Hall-of-Fame for winning the competition for 5 years.
Another activity for the Maliwanag Ang Pasko campaign is reaching out to certain communities and asking them to participate in decorating their communities to spread Christmas joy to the less fortunate. This is the MaP Village for a Cause Program. It is an inter-village decoration and lighting competition where the winner gets Php 150,000 in cash that they can use for community projects or they can share the winnings to the partner charitable institutions.
All these projects were officially launched during the Meralco Lighting of the corporate grounds last Dec. 2. We have witnessed this joyous occasion. It was attended by Mr. Manny Pangilinan (Meralco’s CEO), Mr. Oscar Reyes (Meralco’s COO) and other Meralco top executives and officers. The hosts for the occasion were Jojo A. and Wilma Doesnt. There was a special song number by Mr. Gerald Santos.


It was also the venue where the players of the Meralco Bolts PBA team were introduced. The event’s highlight was the lighting of the Christmas Toy Town of Meralco, where fireworks were set off together with the lights.
We then toured the Toy Town which had an amazing electric train. People could ride on the train and tour around the Meralco Corporate grounds. It was a wonderland for the kids that were there.
For those interested to join the Maliwanag ang Pasko activities, you can call the MaP hotline (1-800-10MaPasko or 1-800-10-6272756 for provincial entriesand 885-7049 for greater Manila customers). You can also log on to the MaP website: www.maliwanagangpasko.com.
Photos courtesy of: http://dakilangbrodkaster.tumblr.com/