"One clap. One fall. One voice. ISANG BASAK."
A quote from keynote speaker Tony DelaRosa at PAMANA's first virtual high school leadership workshop webinar on Saturday, May 23, 2020.
Due to COVID-19, the annual in-person workshop was unable to be held at Harvard University this past April. Instead, the hosting organization, the Philippine American Mainstream Advocacy for Non-Partisan Associations (PAMANA), decided to go virtual and succeeded in gaining twenty students to register, attend, and participate from all over the Northeast including Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire.
This year's workshop theme was “Pamana: Gifts Across Generations.”
During the webinar, the students were asked “What gift do you bring or give to the next generation?” To help start thinking about this question, it was an honor to have Philippine Consul General in New York Claro S. Cristobal join the webinar to talk about what true leadership means. "True leadership demands that you don't care much for credit to yourself. It counts and you show it in the assumption of responsibility for the people you care to lead and for the action you take to lead."
Guest and keynote speaker Tony DelaRosa, who is a writer, poet, and co-founder of Pulse Poetry, also shared a story of his relationship with his ninang and his classroom of students in a portion of his talk called #DontCancelYourNinang. “I knew I had to repair this relationship with my Ninang for the sake of pamana. Pamana between her and my kids. She’s given me so many gifts, and if I was to pay these gifts forward I needed to do so with deep reflection and compassion. I needed to show my kids how possible it is to build a bridge across lines of difference.” Tony sought to learn and understand from someone who holds a completely different ideology and belief on leadership than he did.
This was the message and story given to the student leaders. Helping youths embrace cultural roots, develop communication and leadership, seeing the opportunity to learn from accepting different perspectives, and creating a community amongst themselves and in their cultural peers.
PAMANA would like to thank program partners Philippine Consulate General in New York, the Filipino Young Leaders Program (FYLPRO), National Federation of Filipino American Associations (NaFFAA) New England chapter, and Empowering Pilipino Youth through Collaboration (EPYC).
About PAMANA
PAMANA (Philippine American Mainstream Advocacy for Non-Partisan Associations) was established in New England in 1998 and their mission is to strengthen cooperation among Filipino American organizations in New England, promote mutual understanding, humility and equality, among the Filipino American community, and encourage all Filipino Americans to join, participate, or attend the various events of the year.