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For the past 20 years, The Filipino Express has provided the Filipino American community the best news, arts and entertainment coverage from around the United States and the Philippines.
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This website includes selected articles from this week's edition of the Filipino Express. Not all the stories published in the printed version appear on this site.
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MIAMI -- The culture of the Philippines came to Sunrise on June 17 at the second annual Philippine Independence Day Celebration, with hundreds of Filipinos enjoying the food, music and dances of the South Pacific island nation at Welleby Park.
Spain ruled the Philippines for more than 400 years until the end of the Spanish-American War in 1898.
With independence, the Filipino people began to migrate in large numbers to the United States.
‘’American influence was strong in the Philippines,’’ said Marylou Macatangay of Fort Lauderdale. ``Filipinos saw America as the land of opportunity.’’
About 60,000 Filipinos call South Florida home, where they try to keep the native cultures alive and vibrant, especiallythe strong intergenerational family ties.
In the Philippines, most families would acquire enough land so all branches of a clan could live close to one another.
Although that is difficult here, family bonds remain strong.
‘’We try to instill those values in our children,’’ Macatangay said.
They try to ensure that the next generation is exposed to the cultures, native music and folk dancing are a prevalent part of the celebration.
Being part of a minority in a community with so many different minorities is something the young Filipinos appreciate.
‘’We all connect with each other,’’ said Mia Real, 13, of Miramar. ‘We have more in common with each other, but we learn a lot from our other friends’ cultures.’’
‘’You tend to notice how different cultures behave differently,’’ added Ann Maneje, 12, of Miramar. ``Their parents must influence their style.’’
The aromas of traditional Filipino food wafted through the park as local chefs brought out their specialties.
Barbecued pork kebabs, adobo beef and chicken marinated in soy sauce and spices, noodle dishes and exotic desserts, including sweet rice wrapped in banana leaves, sweet coconut milk with corn swimming in Jell-O, were consumed with gusto.
‘’We figured, since we are fun-loving, we’d do a picnic instead of a formal dinner,’’ Macatangay said. ``Families bring their children. We have a good time.’’
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PROJECT AsPIRE’s initial health screening at the Philippine Independence Day Celebration in NYC on June 4, 2006 was a success.
This was announced by Rhodora Ursua, Project Director of Project AsPIRE.
“The screening event was a great success with 171 being tested for blood pressure and glucose. We could not have done this without the joint efforts of all our collaborators,” she said.
Project AsPIRE cosponsors were the University of the Philippines Medical Alumni Society in America (UPMASA) led by Drs. Guillermo Narvaez, Lynn Chu, and Connie Uy, NYU College of Dentistry students led by Melissa Narvaez and Viviene Valdez, Damayan Migrant Workers Association led by Linda Abad and Ana Liza Caballes, and Kalusugan Coalition led by Dr. Mutya San Agustin, Josephine Rago-Adia, and David Aguilar. According to Dr. Narvaez,
Besides providing a service to the community, this screening event marked Project AsPIRE’s first endeavor to recruit participants for a research study to help Filipinos reduce their risk of heart disease.
Community members at the screening event provided valuable information to help shape the study. Of the screened participants, approximately 30 percent had high blood pressure, (similar to what other studies on Filipinos show). Approximately 70 percent of those screened reported a personal or family history of cardiovascular disease, further confirming the great need to address cardiovascular health in the Filipino community.
This project is made possible by a three-year grant awarded to the Center for Study of Asian American Health (CSAAH) at the NYU School of Medicine to carry out Project AsPIRE in partnership with Kalusugan Coalition (KC).
KC is a multidisciplinary collaboration dedicated to create a unified voice to improve the health of the Filipino American community in the NY and NJ area.
For more information about the project and upcoming health screening events, please call 212-263-3776 or visit our website www.kalusugancoalition.org.
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NEW YORK -- While the Philippine educational system is constantly getting a failing grade due to a number of problems -- especially a dearth of good teachers — the United States is hailing a Filipino as a hero and model teacher.
The New York-based People magazine, a sister publication of Time, devotes two pages of its June 12 issue to Oliver Sicat, a 27-year-old graduate of Harvard University.
Sicat a mathematics teacher at a school in a rough neighborhood in Boston, Massachusetts.
Titled “One Teacher’s Dream” and written by Richard Jerome with Kristen Mascia, the People article -- which appears in the magazine’s “Heroes Among Us” section -- goes this wise:
“Running his first Boston Marathon on April 17, Oliver Sicat was fading fast. The 27-year-old math teacher had hit the 20-mile mark and scaled ‘Heartbreak Hill’ when his knees started buckling. Then, at mile 22, 15 teenagers bolted from the crowd -- his students at Madison Park Technical Vocational High School in Boston’s tough Roxbury district. For a mile they jogged along, chanting ‘Sicat! Sicat!’ and waving posters that proclaimed, ‘Oliver, we believe in you!’
“The message was fitting, for it was Sicat who had taught these inner-city kids to believe in themselves. They are members of Emagine, the innovative after-school program Sicat developed in graduate school at Harvard. For four years, this son of Filipino immigrants has been their mentor, friend and guiding spirit.
“‘Showing up at the marathon ‘was our way to support him,’ says Maalum Robinson, 17, ‘though it wasn’t close to what he’s given us.’
“That would be a new lease on the future. Accepting 20 freshmen who expressed interest in 2002, Sicat has tutored the students twice a week during the academic year and for six weeks in the summers. But his efforts have gone far beyond the classroom -- the full-time teacher has taken students on rafting and theater trips, helped them land paid internships and toured colleges with them, funding the program with grant money and out of his own pocket.
“‘They don’t hear positive messages every day,’ says Sicat, who takes no salary for Emagine. ‘They needed to have someone teach that to them.’
“The prospect of raising $20,000 to buy laptops for each of his soon-to-be high school graduates -- sent Sicat on his marathon quest. Finishing in 4 hr. 24 min., he managed to collect $5,265 and expects to raise the rest mainly through his Web site. ‘I want to say, “Here’s something that will help you guys out,”’ he says, ‘even though I won’t be around.’
On June 24, Sicat leaves for Chicago, where he will develop a charter school based on Emagine -- a step that students like Robinson applaud. ‘I don’t think it’s the end at all,’ says Robinson, who will attend UMass-Boston. ‘He’s going on to bigger and better things. And so are we.’”
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RIGODON follows the spiritual journeys of three Filipino immigrants in New York City whose lives intertwine in the age of racial profiling and government crackdowns.
It will be having its New York City premiere as part of the New York Asian American International Film Festival.
Rigodon stars internationally acclaimed actors Joel Torre, Chin-Chin Gutierrez and Arthur Acuña. Screenings will be held on July 16, Sunday, at the Asia Society at 8:30 pm, and at the Quad Cinemas in downtown Manhattan on July 20, Thursday at 3:30 pm.
Another screening will be held at the Charles B. Wang Center at Stony Brook University in Long Island on August 3 at 7:00 pm.
Acuña plays Amado, the fighter, too old to continue boxing in his native land, who comes to the US to battle the harsh conditions every migrant faces as he dreams of the family he left behind.
Gutierrez is Salome, the dreaming war-bride, who has been wed to her American husband for ten years, but visions haunt her as she pursues her American dream.
Torre is Dante, the rebel-poet, who has been helping his fellow immigrants for over a decade. But who will help him in his hour of need?
Their stories unfold in poetic cinematic language as the film meditates on the beauty and the horror that is the American Dream.
The rigodon dance, whose roots lie in rural France (known as the rigaudon; also known in English as the rigadoon), is a group dance which has two concentric circles of dancers moving in opposite directions, resulting in new partnerships as the circles rotate.
The dance was introduced to the Philippines by Spanish colonizers. What once began as a peasant dance was appropriated by wealthy Filipinos and became a symbol of the upper-class.
The Philippines has been ‘partnered’ with numerous Colonial forces, from the 300-year rule of the Spanish, its purchase by the United States, to the occupation by the Japanese. This complexity is compounded by the fact that Filipinos are one of the fastest growing immigrant populations in the United States.
Rigodon is the metaphor for the various colonial partnerships of the Philippines as well as the current ‘dance’ of political spheres of influence, social groups, and the individuals that immigrate to far away lands in search of better lives who all continue to go around in circles.
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