Page 25 - OGA 2017

Outstanding Governorship
Outstanding Governorship Award 2017Award 2017

From the start, Marcos incorporated her creative background into Marcos made it a point to first inspire Ilocanos, harnessing the existing
her leadership style. She identified the need for disruption, storytelling, pride and awareness that her constituents had in their identity. She
scripting, improvisation catharsis, and crowdsourcing to address age-old intensified tourism promotion of the UNESCO World Heritage San Agustin
problems like poverty, ignorance, and violence. Church, the white-sanded Pagudpud beaches, and Bangui windmill farms,
While families in Ilocos Norte were generally well-supported by relatives as well as initiated the development of more premier destinations like
working abroad, and a low poverty rate due to dollar remittances, the high the Paoay Sand Dunes, Museo nina Juan at Antonio Luna, Taoid Museum
rate of migration and overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) posed a problem of the Ilocano Cordilleras, and Nueva Era Eco-Cultural Park. Uplifting the
in that Ilocanos were being forced to leave home just to support their province's heroic tradition, the "Heroes Walk" was installed along the
families. Marcos realized the lack of rural development, investment, and "school belt" in the Capital City of Laoag, featuring the busts of the famous
local entrepreneurs with problems like underemployment, illiteracy, and Luna brothers, Josefa Llanes Escoda, Artemio Ricarte, Gregorio Aglipay,
substance and domestic abuse still rising. Thus she came up with her vision Teofilo Yldefonso, and other Ilocano heroes to remind today's youth of what
for the province: a livable, sustainable, and resilient Ilocos Norte where their forefathers have done, sacrificed, and achieved for the country.
migration was not a last resort but just another choice—either stay home and
make a decent wage, or migrate overseas to learn, earn, and quickly return.

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