Benjamin Alves is GMA Network Excellence Award ambassador for 3rd time

Kapuso actor Benjamin Alves continues to be the ambassador of the GMA Network Excellence Award (GNEA), as he signed a Memorandum Of Agreement at the network today, April 13.

Benjamin Alves, also an honor student, continues to be ambassador for GMA Network Excellence Award (GNEA) as he signs a MOA today, April 13. @gmanews pic.twitter.com/tepZJ52VrS

— Jamil Santos (@Jamil_Santos02) April 13, 2018

Joining him were GMA Network Chairman and CEO Felipe L. Gozon, GMA Vice President for Corporate Affairs and Communications Angela Javier-Cruz, SVP for Alternative Productions Gigi Santiago-Lara and GMA Artist Center AVP for Talent Imaging and Marketing Simoun Ferrer.

"I'm looking forward to finding out who are this year's candidates, or what kind of characteristics will I remember from them... We are looking for students who excel beyond their standards, beyond good grades, but do something else beyond that," Benjamin said.

"That's important, excellence, to excel at something. I want to meet the students who excel in the requirements that we have, the great point average, the accomplishments. I want to see what makes them go beyond that. I'm very excited, I'm very honored, I'm very excited to go to the campuses as well to see mga Kapuso natin na estudyante pa," he added.

Before becoming a full-time actor, Benjamin graduated summa cum laude in English Literature at the University of Guam.

Benjamin said he will be part of the panel that will deliberate on the GNEA awardees.

"This is 16, 17 years of striving for excellence. I think we can give them an afternoon to sit down and get them eight to 10 minutes of our time to talk to them because this is years and years of hardwork, sleepless nights, the sacrifices I can only imagine, some of them have financial situations," he said.

"These are all realities I'm aware of for each of our students. That's why I'm so passionate about it because may istorya sa likod ng [paghihirap] nila eh," Benjamin continued.

The Kapuso actor said: "I'm very much involved in the process. We deliberate right after we meet everybody."

"They take their part of reaching excellence very, very seriously and very, very passionately. All the more that we should respect that and take our part very seriously," he added.

The GNEA is the Kapuso Network's CSR program that recognizes the graduating students who excellently demonstrated their leadership, academic performance and social responsibility.

With nominations now open for the academic year 2017 to 2018, the nationwide search is open to all Filipino graduating students of Mass Communication, Multi-media Arts, Advertising, Electronics and Communications Engineering, Computer Science, Computer Engineering and Information Technology.

Being the GNEA ambassador, Benjamin said aspiring students could reach him through his social media accounts, and he was willing to have an open dialogue with the students on topics like education. — MDM, GMA News