Ms Cecile Guidote-Alvarez is the youngest Filipina to receive the Ramon Magsaysay Award as early as 1972 and the first in the world to be honoured with a UNESCO Artist for Peace Award for the collective work of a socially integrated performance group of differently-abled, out-of-school and indigenous youth she has developed. She is an internationally acclaimed artist, the first Filipina to be elected in the International Theatre Institute (ITI)–UNESCO board, the primos interpares NGO in consultative status with UNESCO and based in UNESCO, Paris. She is the foremost exponent of dynamically applying cultural diversity for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) In September 2010, she was designated as spokesperson of the ITI in the UNESCO High-Level Roundtable Meeting on Culture and Development in the United Nations in New York City and was part of the delegation to the UN of President Benigno Aquino III as adviser last September. She first served UNESCO during the administration of President Corazon Aquino where she invited UNESCO Director General Federico Mayor for the UNESCO celebration of launching the decade of Culture.

She is the founder of the Philippine Educational Theatre Association (PETA), a National Theatre Movement that initiated the use of the national language and mother tongues, and creative use of historic locales like Fort Santiago, Rizal Park and Paco Park as performance spaces. She pioneered the promotion of broadcast theatre on TV and radio through Balintataw, a CMMA Honor Roll awardee as Best Drama program hailed by CNN as a soap for social change, distinguished with a twin award for radio of KBPs Golden Dove as Best Cultural- Educational show and Best Radio Drama program. She is also known as an environmentalist with the Earthsavers, formally unveiled as UNESCO DREAM Center during the visit of Director-General Irina Bokova, the 6th in the world so acknowledged as an excellent showcase of cultural caregiving to vulnerable groups as a poverty alleviation program. As an author, her book “Theatre for the Nation: A Prospectus for the National Theater of the Philippines” won the Annual Awards for Outstanding Philippine Books in 2003 by the Manila Critics Circle. She served as Director-General of the Dia del Galeón Festival in 2010 successfully realizing a UNESCO resolution approving a yearly observance of the historicity of the galleon trade as a vessel of commerce and cultural transmission. She is an advocate of Indigenous Cultures, Heritage Preservation and Creative Industries, having organized UN related events even during exile such as for the Women’s Year, Children’s Year, Year for the Disabled, Year for Communications Technology, Year for the Indigenous Peoples.

Her production at the world reknowned La MaMa Theatre reaped honors as Outstanding Political Theatre and UN Human Rights Day Awrad for Cultural innovation. Just recently, her staging of 2 original zarzuelas fo Dr. Alejandro Roces “Something to Crow About” and Isagani Cruz “Baler sa Puso Ko” have won Aliw Awards as Best Musical and Best Musical Director
In 2006, as NCCA Executive Director and ITI Board member, she invited Director-General Koichiro Matsuura to preside at the UNESCO-ITI 31st Congress who launched the global movement of Cultural Diversity for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Currently, as UNESCO-ITI Philippine Center President as NGO partner of NCCA she has crafted and defended the design of a 2-year framework, 2010-2011 of operationalizing the Philippines as 1st ASEAN Culture Capital.
She likewise was the spirit behind the UNESCO proclamation of a World Arts Education Week and pushed for the inclusion of the recognition of culture as an essential ingredient for sustainable development in the Rio+20 Declaration.
She is Communications Director of the Ninoy Aquino Movement founded by her husband former Senator, now Climate Change Commissioner Heherson T. Alvarez. Cecile Guidote-Alvarez has 2 children born in exile, Hexilon and Herxilia.