“To help end poverty by 2024, that is my life purpose, says Antonio “Tony” Meloto, founder of Gawad Kalinga, a humanitarian movement that builds communities for the poor in the country, “to get my children to make it their mission; to get as many people to join us. What can be a greater goal than that?”

Galleria Duemila, the country’s longest running private gallery, was born out of a broken heart. But first, Italian-born gallery owner, Silvana Ancellotti-Diaz, fell in love. In 1970, while working as a flight attendant for Alitalia, she came to the Philippines where she met artist Ramon Diaz. In less than a year, they were married. They spent their honeymoon in Italy and New York.

The faint aroma of baked cookies welcomes you as you enter the house of Roshan Samtani. “I am not a trained baker,” she Samtani. “I am not a trained baker,” she was eight years old, assisting her mom in the kitchen. “My mom was very good in the kitchen, cooking and baking,” Samtani relates. “If I want to make something, she would teach me how to do it, or explain how it’s done. Then I would do it on my own.”

He was the only Filipino editor at Oprah’s magazine. “It was an honor to work for O,” Peterson Jason “PJ” Pascual recalls. As an associate accessories editor, he was given the task to do market research in accessories from high to low-end labels, focusing on the latest trends. “I was the only editor allowed to go to all of Ms. Winfrey’s cover shoots in New York.”

“I discovered parts of my feet I never knew existed,” chuckled Father Bienvenido “Ben” Nebres. “I did not expect I would experience pain in my feet from the third to the tenth day. I was preparing for blisters, which I did not get. It took me a week to discover that the problem was that my feet had expanded and my toes were cramped inside my shoe.”