One Filipino at a Time

by Ysa Quiballo and Jerry Clarito

Transcript

Five three, Five three, Cincuenta y tres, Cincuenta y tres, Letter G

Okay, so my name is Jerry Clarito and I’m the chairman of the board of directors.

But at the same time (I am) were wearing the hat of the Executive Director which means I have to oversee the operations of the organization.

I was appointed as a member of the board in July of 2016.

The vision of the organization is to make Rizal Center “home away from home”.

There’s a place where they can go and that’s basically one of the legacies of the organization is to have a place for gathering, for talking, for organizing, for dreaming as we are an immigrant community (longing) for our food, our music, our jokes, our stories.Right?

Where is the place for that? This is the community place.

There is a real financial requirement to keep the lights on, as we say.

Though the model is people power meaning (we can function) if we can have a lot of volunteers.

The one who did the repair of our flooring was a volunteer.

He just stepped up.

He repaired the auditorium, one tile at a time.

Which is literally that’s what he did.

(Similarly), we build the community one Filipino at a time.

Because that’s the only way to do it.

And that’s from the experience (of our people).

You cannot just say to the community, “Hey, come here” all over, you know, this is what we have to do. You (engage the community) ask them one person at a time.

Ysa Quiballo is a Filipina student journalist at Northwestern University. In the future, she hopes to continue uplifting the community through multimedia storytelling.


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