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FA Celebrates 20th Anniversary with Food, Family, and Fun!

By Elaine Tamargo ’11

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

After dinner, FA’s e-board showed video presentations 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 Asian Arts Fest. Archipelag-a, a spoken word group made up of female FA members, have travelled to different universities to perform each semester, touching the lives of their audience members through their powerful words. The e-board also showed a movie they created called “A Day in the Life of FA,” which followed a few of FA’s members through a typical day at Brown—from running to class, academics, having lunch at the Ratty, remembering home, and talking about other concerns that FA members have on their minds—and that throughout all these worries, FA will always be there for support whenever needed. The discussion that followed the movie presentation confirmed that alumni also felt these same pressures and concerns while they were at school, emphasizing the valuable connection that students and alumni have. For 20 years, FA has been known as one of the most tight-knit student groups, providing a home away from home and being each other’s FAmily while on campus. FA has been an integral part of the Brown’s Asian/Asian-American community, continuing to be known as one of the most tight-knit groups on campus.

Since the FAHM Social in October, FA has been especially busy. We are currently putting together our Group Independent Study Project for Beginning Tagalog to begin next semester. Three of our members were able to attend the Fall Dialogue at Rutgers in New Jersey for the Filipino Intercollegiate Networking Dialogue (FIND) and meet students from Filipino student groups at other universities. FA Traditional and Modern lit up the stage at Legends of the SEA this year, with Traditional performing a Sakuting routine and Modern performing four pieces and a modern Tinikling routine. Archipelag-a also performed at Legends, debuting their new piece for this semester with intense passion and emotion as always. 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 District 1, or schools in the Northeast. Kamayan was a wonderful opportunity for FA members to meet more students from Filipino groups at other District 1 schools, as well as 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. The FAHM Social provided a wonderful way for FA members to reconnect with alumni, and 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 401-863-9493, FA would love to have lunch 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 it and receive information about FA’s activities in the future, please email or call Myra. Please spread the word to your fellow classmates that might be interested in being included on our list to receive future invitations. Please also feel free to visit our website (http://www.brown.edu/Students/Filipino_Alliance/Site/Home.html) which has updates about FA’s activities. Happy Holidays!