Sharmaine Centenera Buencamino was born on Feb. 28, 1965, in Naga City. Her Mom was a teacher who later worked for government, and her Dad raised chickens on a farm in Australia. Shamaine went to Colegio de Sta. Isabel, and before Grade 5, she appeared in a play. She found out she could get lost in a character, could cry on cue, and she felt special. She joined an inter-school declamation contest, for which she was trained by the mother of VP Leni Robredo.

The Julia Buencamino Project was established in 2016, Shamaine has advocated the prevention of teenage suicides and parents’ unshackling themselves from the grip of guilt. Julia herself helped four of her friends from ending their lives through dancing and acting in theater. Julia appeared on television, and gained a lot of friends. She led a secret life, however, something her parents found out in her diary and her paintings only after her final exit. She didn’t admit to her parents that the cuts on her legs were self-inflicted. Or that every ache she complained of were signs of problems she kept to herself. She further revealed in her diary that at 13, she already knew she was trans. Julia’s depression lasted for more than two weeks, a duration that could push one like her to the edge of sanity.

Find her in https://www.facebook.com/TheJuliaBuencaminoProject/

Mercedes Arzadon or popularly known as "Teacher Ched" is bio - faculty member at the UP College of Education teaching courses on Informal and Alternative Education, Socio-cultural Foundations of Education, and Philippine Educational System. She home schooled her children in 1990s which her children would refer as the happiest period of their childhood.

Websites:

http://iskwiki.upd.edu.ph/index.php/Ma._Mercedes_E._Arzadon
http://mothertongue-based.blogspot.com/
Contact: mearzadon@upd.edu.ph, chedarzadon.upd@gmail.com