13 May 2014 - As the culmination of the weeklong Flores de Mayo Festival in Honolulu, the 22nd Annual Filipino Fiesta was held on May 10 at its new location, the Honolulu Civic Center grounds.
Sponsored by the Filipino Community Center, the daylong Fiesta is the oldest running and most popular event celebrating Filipino culture. For 2014, it adopted the theme “Isang Puso, Isang Diwa.”
This year’s Fiesta once again featured various aspects of Filipino culture with Filipino food booths, traditional games, cultural exhibits, cultural and keiki (children) villages, and an all-day live entertainment featuring Hawaii-based and visiting GMA Kapuso stars Benjamin Alves and Steven Silva and Aljur Abrenica to the delight of their Filipino fans.
Sponsor, business and community booths complemented the lively atmosphere of the Fiesta with games, surprises, raffle prizes and giveaways.
The Philippine Consulate General in Honolulu, Hawaii, participated as one of the twenty booths of the Philippine Cultural Village. Consulate General personnel handed out consular forms, tourism and trade materials to interested individuals. They also promoted the 9th Ambassadors, Consuls General and Tourism Directors Tour (ACGTDT) and encouraged the booth’s visitors to register for the 2016 Philippine National Elections.
The Fiesta also included a community health fair where around sixty (60) volunteer medical professionals for the Bayanihan Clinic Without Walls offered free curbside consultations and medical services for the Fiesta’s attendees.
The Fiesta concluded with the Santacruzan Parade, where beautifully-dressed reynas and princesas and their escorts representing biblical characters paraded under colorful flower-decked arches to commemorate the finding of the Holy Cross by Queen Helena, mother of Constantine the Great. This year’s Reyna Elena is outgoing Miss Hawaii Filipina, Erika Joy Ordoñez.
The Filipino Fiesta began 22 years ago when L&L Drive Inn founder Eddie Flores initiated the celebration as part of the awareness campaign to solicit support for the building of the Filipino Community Center. It has since become Hawaii’s largest and most colorful showcase of Filipino culture with an annual attendance of nearly 10,000 people every year.
Spectators, participants and organizers credit the Fiesta’s popularity and longevity to its broad-based appeal and varied activities, and in view of the fact that Filipinos now comprise the largest ethnic group in Hawaii. END