A STAR WITH A PURE HEART
She wants to show women and young girls that there are people who love and support them amid inequality issues
“Itayo ang bandera ng mga babae!”
In a world where girls and women continue to fight for their rights, it’s important to have a voice that can continue to empower them to stand up for themselves to be reminded that the world is not as bad as it seems.
Through World Vision, one of GMA’s brightest stars, Bianca Umali becomes the beacon of hope for ladies in a new campaign — 1000 Girls, a campaign to help girls aim for a better future and reach for their full potential.
Bianca Umali shared that the kind of advocacies World Vision is promoting, especially in this new campaign, serves as an opportunity and responsibility for her. She wants to show women and young girls that there are people who love and support them amid inequality issues.
“I see the 1000 Girls campaign as showing them na they are loved and to dream big. They can start early and they have such a long way, and ang laki ng mundo nila. So, yun yung campaign for me,” World Vision’s ambassadress for Education shared.
“Everyone knows how children and women are close to my heart, this is why I really love these things, I think it’s because of how I grew up with my grandmother with my cousins who were all girls,” she added.
Bianca grew up with her grandmother. As a kid, she had to become independent and take up the role of being the eldest sister to her cousins. “In the past, when my grandmother took me in, I became the elder sister to all my cousins,” she shared.
The 1000 Girls campaign enabled Umali to be an ‘ate’ to a portion of children that she wanted to become an elder sister to.
“When I became a part of World Vision, they gave me another opportunity to become an elder sister to all the children in the world,” she added.
The actress started as an ambassadress for the World Vision last 2016 with two advocacies; for Education for Youth and Ending Violence for Children, in which World Vision granted her dream campaign when she turned 18. She started visiting places like in Cebu and Marawi to visit and help the children living there.
“Aside from visiting different places, kasi pag pumupunta din po ako don, nakikitulong din po akong tulungan yung mga bata, meron po kaming mga educational tents na naka-set up for them, and child-friendly spaces. Like, in Marawi, madami po kaming mga child-friendly spaces. Lahat ng mga bata nandun, and nakikipaglaro po ako sa kanila. We fed them, we talked to them. It was an amazing experience,” she shared.
As a kid, she had to become independent and take up the role of being the eldest sister to her cousins.
Bianca has been sponsoring one child ever since she started with the World Vision and she is excited to sponsor more in the future. World Vision is a global, Christian relief, development and advocacy organization in the Philippines.
Just like the 1000 Girls campaign, Bianca incorporated her beliefs with her ongoing television show in GMA-7, Sahaya, where she plays a young woman who ventures the harsh realities of the city life.
“Also the project I’m doing also is relevant to Sahaya, sa mga nakakaalam po, we don’t only promote education in our show but we also promote feminism ‘ate’ (female empowerment) and kung paano po lumalaban ang isang babae, and I think
that is why sobrang proud ako na kaya kong itayo ang bandera ng mga babae,” she shared.
Before Sahaya started, she had to undergo intensive learning to properly play her role. Bianca also shared that all the experiences and struggles she had experienced in the past and is still going through made her closer to her role as Sahaya.
“I think that’s the reason why Sahaya is close to me because what I needed back then and go through to get the role right are the things I get to apply in my life now,” she shared.
As the show is nearing its end, Bianca shared that she will miss Sahaya most of all. She have treated her character in the show as her ‘baby’ from how she prepared and took care of the treatment of the role. She said that playing Sahaya is not just another project for her, but a step to knowing herself better.