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The Filipino Alliance Celebrates its 20th Anniversary with Food, Family, and Fun!

By Elaine Tamargo '11

A rainy Saturday evening wasn't enough to keep the Filipino Alliance (FA) at Brown from gathering to celebrate our 20 years as a student organization at the annual Filipino-American Heritage Month (FAHM) Social. FA members, parents, alumni, and friends came together on October 25, 2008 to enjoy an evening of home-cooked Filipino food and to meet past and present FA members. About 30 FA alumni and family members returned to campus to reconnect with fellow FA members and to catch up with FA's recent activities.

After dinner, FA's e-board showed videos of past Archipelag-a and FA dance performances. Our traditional and modern dance groups have had the honor of being the closing act of both Legends of the SEA during Southeast Asian Week and the Asian Arts Fest. And Archipelag-a, a spoken word group made up of female FA members, travels to different universities to perform each semester, often touching the lives of audience members with their powerful words.

The e-board also showed a movie it created called "A Day in the Life of FA." The movie followed a few FA members through a typical day at Brown — from running to class, having lunch at the Ratty, reminiscing about home, and talking about the concerns and the pressures they face. Throughout it all, FA always tries to be there to support its members. After the movie presentation, many alumni said they also faced these same pressures and concerns while they were at Brown, which illustrated to many of us the valuable connection that students and alumni have and the important role that FA has played in many of our lives. For 20 years, FA has been known as one of the most tight-knit student groups. We provide a home away from home and are each other's Family while on campus.

Since the FAHM Social in October, FA has been very busy:

• We worked to put together a Group Independent Study Project (GISP) on beginning Tagalog.
• Three of our members were able to attend the fall meeting of the Filipino Intercollegiate Networking Dialogue (FIND) at Rutgers University in New Jersey.
• FA's dance groups lit up the stage at Legends of the SEA this year. The traditional group performed a Sakuting routine and the modern group performed four pieces as well as a modern Tinikling routine.
• Archipelag-a also performed at Legends, debuting its new piece for the semester with intense passion and emotion as always.
• Finally, the weekend before Thanksgiving, FA members went to Boston to support Archipelag-a's performance at Kamayan, FIND's annual cultural show for schools in the Northeast. Kamayan was a wonderful opportunity for FA members to meet more students from Filipino groups as well as to enjoy performances by other traditional and modern dance groups.

Thank you to all of our alumni that came to the FAHM Social to make it such a successful event. FA will continue this new tradition of inviting alumni back. Also, if you happen to be on campus sometime during the school year, please contact Myra Liwanag '91 by email (Myra_Liwanag@brown.edu) or by phone at 401-863-9493. FA members would love to have lunch with you while you are here.

We are currently building our database of alumni, but we still haven't been able to reach everyone. If you are Filipino, Filipino-American, or an FA alumni and did not receive an invitation for this year's FAHM Social, we might not have the correct information for you. If you would like to be put on the list and to receive information about FA's activities in the future, please email or call Myra. Spread the word to your fellow classmates who might also want to be on our list. Please also feel free to visit our website which has updates about FA's activities.

Click here to go to FA's Web site.

Click here to see videos of recent FA performances.