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By Tino Largado When does your strength become your weakest point? Nicole Silvestre, LoveYourself Volunteer, on her BPO Queen 2018 experience: “It was a battle between myself and my limitations.” For LoveYourself Volunteer Nicole Silvestre, her confident response to this question sealed her fate on the 29th of May, 2018. Having already bested 22 other candidates vying to be the very first BPO Queen, Nicole took no time in drawing a heartfelt answer not only based from experience, but inspired by her volunteer organization, no less. “My biggest strength will never be my weakest point because this is something I can always hold on to. I believe that loving yourself will always be your biggest strength and it will never be a weakness.” Nicole bagged First Runner-Up at the end of the night —  a feat Nicole herself considers a satisfying end to the journey of a 26-year old BPO employee who, only months ago, had one previous office pageant and a noontime show transgender queen search on ...

By Carlos Diego A. Rozul The HIV and AIDS epidemic has long been attached to the LGBTQI+ community since the early 1980’s. [ 1 ] As of December 2017, the HIV/AIDS and ART Registry of the Philippines has reported that 87% of sexually transmitted cases of HIV are men having sex with men (MSM). [ 2 ] Globally, there is limited data on the prevalence of HIV infection among transgender people as most epidemiological surveillance systems only ask for a person’s sex at birth, making transgender women fall under the MSM category. [ 3 ] A meta-analysis by Baral and colleagues in 2013 [ 4 ] revealed that the average HIV prevalence among trans women in several North American, Latin American, European, and Asian countries was 19.1%, significantly higher than the general population. Other studies, found that transgender persons have higher risk of HIV infection than MSM. [ 5 ] What is the essence of a trans woman? There are many qualities to trans women that make up who they are as a group and ...