A drive to help a fallen community rebuild after one of the most destructive typhoons on record will bring one UCLA student back to her mother’s homeland and connect her to her Filipino origins.
This month, the Samahang Pilipino student group chose to sponsor first-year undeclared student Alana Sanchez-Prak to go on a relief and rebuild mission to help those affected by Typhoon Haiyan, which struck the Philippines in November. Sanchez-Prak will work with other volunteers from around the U.S. who are part of the Kapit Bisig Kabataan Network, a student-led relief network that connects Filipino communities nationwide.
“My mom hasn’t been able to go back (to the Philippines), and her dream is to take me and my sisters one day,” Sanchez-Prak said.
The Samahang Pilipino board voted to focus the student group’s efforts on its year-long campaign, Never Again: Bayanihan for Typhoon Haiyan Relief, said Marien Padua, Samahang’s administrative coordinator and a second-year Asian American studies student.
The campaign aims to raise money for typhoon relief, educate people about the struggles still facing those affected by the typhoon and send one UCLA student to the Philippines to do relief work over the summer.
“Bayanihan” is a Tagalog word that originally comes from Filipino communities coming together to lift up houses damaged by storms.
For Samahang, bayanihan means coming together as a community to lift each other up in response to any challenge, said Kristine de los Santos, a first-year political science student and the incoming administrative coordinator for Samahang.
The Bayanihan campaign and Samahang’s goals focus on the value of community. At the end of most meetings, members say a Tagalog phrase, “isang bagsak,” which means when one person in the community is down, everyone is down, de los Santos said.
“As a community we all fall together, but we all rise together. If our community back home is down, we feel it here, too,” de los Santos said.
Sanchez-Prak’s trip will last three weeks during which she will travel to three different islands in the Philippines. She will work with communities in the Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao regions to help rebuild infrastructure damaged by the typhoon. The people whom Sanchez-Prak and the other volunteers will help have offered to open their homes to the volunteers, she said.
Sanchez-Prak said her interest in giving back to the Filipino community began with a trip she took with Samahang in winter quarter.
While visiting historic Little Manila in Stockton, Calif., she said she saw for the first time “a Filipino community struggling to stay alive.” Where there had once been a thriving Filipino neighborhood dating back to the 1930s, Sanchez-Prak said there were just three recognized historic buildings when she visited.
“You think everything is fine, and then you see things like that,” Sanchez-Prak said. “You realize you can always do more to help.”
She said she hopes to bring her desire to help to the Philippines and continue recovery efforts even after the news of the typhoon slowly dies off and people forget about the cause.
To meet its fundraising goal of $2,000 for the trip, Samahang will sell yellow and black bracelets with the word Bayanihan embroidered on them, de los Santos said. The group will also sell T-shirts that represent the meaning behind Bayanihan and feature important symbols of Filipino culture, such as the national flower, she added. Both the bracelets and shirts will be sold on Bruin Walk during ninth week.
In addition to sending Sanchez-Prak to the Philippines, Samahang will also donate any extra money raised during their campaign to organizations that work on rebuilding efforts, like the National Alliance for Filipino Concerns, Padua said.
She added that Samahang chose to send a student to the Philippines instead of exclusively donating money to charities because it has a concern about whether the donated money is actually benefiting the people it is meant to help or whether it is being eaten up in administrative costs.
“If you go (to the Philippines) you can interact with people and help rebuild,” Sanchez-Prak said. “You can make a better connection to the community.”
Samahang plans to continue its efforts to raise money and support for Typhoon Haiyan relief this Saturday during its culture night.