2022
Hi! I am Avel Manansala, from General Santos City, Island of Mindanao, Philippines. Gensan (as it is called) is considered the Tuna Capital of the Philippines, being host of the country's 6 of 7 of its largest tuna canneries. It lies within the region of SoCCSKSarGen. 
Before I became a Local Guide, I have been an active user of Map Maker since 2009 when the group of bloggers, the Sox Bloggers, that I co-founded and head (until today) conducted a MapUp (which we used to call a Mapping Party to entice volunteers to participate). That led on to more MapUps in our region with invitations pouring in from local government units, universities and NGOs. I was invited to talk about our Map Maker Community in the Asia Pacific Geo-Users Summit in Singapore in 2011 and in the ASPAC Google MapMaker Summit in Hyderabad in 2012 and hosted the Google Map Maker Summit Philippines - Mindanao in 2012.
In March 2013, I was assigned as Manager of the Google Business Group in my city. This gave me more reasons to organize GeoWalks and Mapups as part of helping local businesses create or strengthen their online presence.
In 2014, I discovered the Local Guides program and seeing how easier it was to use, I signed up immediately and have not stopped contributing my local knowledge about my home city and region since then. I was driven by my desire to give a positive picture of the island where I live, Mindanao, having had to suffer a poor image for decades now due to armed conflict between the government and insurgents. I felt that with more Local Guides joining in and sharing the best of what our island had to offer, we can actually help improve tourism and the local economy and thus boost a rosier picture. This makes us ambassadors of goodwill in a sense.
So, I started giving orientation talks about the Local Guides Program to business and tourism groups, both from the government & private sectors; schools and universities; Google Communities; women groups; media and blogger groups. I organized small photo walks and food crawls on a regular basis, much of them we shared and promoted on social media.
In 2017, Local Guides SoCCSkSarGen or Sox (an acronym of the cities and provinces comprising South Central Mindanao) was recognized as an "unofficial LG community" by Google, the 3rd and last community to be afforded as such in the Philippines. This is testament to our hard work and passion plus commitment for the Local Guides program.
The City Legislative Council of the Local Government of General Santos, learning all these, passed an Ordinance recognizing my efforts as a Local Guides & as the only Philippine representative to the Local Guides Summit 2016. I felt that I have gone full circle after this.
I have also guested in various television and radio shows in my city, to talk about the work that I and our community are doing and my "trending" posts about my journey as a Local Guide on social media have all gained traction for this program. Currently, I have been embarking on encouraging our community to do more by inputing details and info for sectors of the society with special needs like PWDs, Breast feeding moms, Non-pork eaters or those with dietary restrictions, Pet lovers, among others.
This month of April 2018, I finally reached Level 10, a long but rewarding adventure that gave me immense fulfilment and brought me to San Francisco twice and back (Local Guides Summit 2016 & 2017) and have given me the realization that in our own small way, through the Local Guides program, we can leave our lasting legacy to the world.
#LetsGuide more!!
