The local government unit (LGU) of General Santos (GenSan) City, through its Sangguniang Kabataan (SK), has recently launched the localized version of Better Today PH, PLDT and Smart’s collaborative platform for wellness, safe spaces, and changemaking in the digital world. The launch of @BetterTodayGenSan is part of PLDT and Smart’s month-long efforts for Safer Internet Day 2022.

They toiled long hours, climbing poles, splicing the tiny, hair-thin cables, inching their way under a bridge to repair the destruction brought on by Super Typhoon Odette.  For 27-year-old PLDT engineer Brian Reodique, who came face to face with the realities in Palawan, it was an experience one can only learn from the school of life.

In line with Safer Internet Day, the youth of General Santos City championed different awareness advocacy campaigns, particularly on mental health and Internet safety.

Super Typhoon Odette may have posed tough challenges to heavily impacted communities, but they’ve only strengthened the resolve of PLDT’s frontliners to reconnect people with their loved ones.

While the New Year brought hope for new beginnings to most, it was a different story for people in Palawan. The ruined landscape evoked sadness and desolation, following super typhoon Odette’s wrath.

He could have waited for the floodwaters to subside. But malasakit (compassion) for his fellow Palaweños and the immediate need to restore the Palawan network propelled 58-year-old Modesto “Dong” Q. Perez and his team to walk on the flooded road, strewn with enormous trunks of uprooted trees, a day after Super Typhoon Odette hit the province.

PLDT, Inc. and Smart Communications, Inc. (Smart) have reconnected more areas in the Visayas and Mindanao after the onslaught of super typhoon #OdettePH.

PLDT, Smart, and the Makati Medical Center Foundation are working together to build more mentally resilient communities, and creating a safe space to support the country’s Health Heroes in the frontline service through the Better Today Conversations on Mental Health Awareness.

Over 355 college students, grouped into 78 teams, from 29 universities and colleges nationwide, joined the second season of the Smart Prepaid Innovation Generation (InnoGen) – an innovation grant program for the youth. Aligned with Smart’s and parent company PLDT’s core value of malasakit (compassion), InnoGen poses the challenge “How can the youth help the Philippines recover from the pandemic?”

Overcoming tough logistical challenges brought on by typhoon Odette, the PLDT group successfully delivers its first tranche of relief goods to the hardest-hit areas in the Visayas. PLDT and Smart, together with PLDT-Smart Foundation, have turned over around 500 food packs to the local government unit of Kabankalan City in Negros Occidental. These will be distributed to communities that were heavily impacted typhoon Odette.