11 December 2014 – Philippine Consul General to Honolulu Gina A. Jamoralin, together with representatives from the Filipino Community Center, the Candonians of Hawaii and the Philippine Airlines Honolulu Office, signed on December 05 the Memorandum of Cooperation establishing a collaborative relationship among the abovementioned organizations to create and implement an Ilocano language immersion program which will target the young Filipino Americans in Hawaii.
The Offices of Representative Eric Singson of the 2nd District of Ilocos Sur and Mayor Ericson Singson of Candon, Ilocos Sur have agreed to be the Ilocos-based partners for this project.
The program will afford 30 qualified, young Filipino Americans the rare opportunity to learn basic Ilocano language in a classroom set-up for a period of three months in 2015. At the end of the language course, the top five students will be selected to embark on a ten-day immersion program to the Philippines in June 2015.
“We are undertaking this project as all of us recognize our joint commitment and mutual goal to strengthen the teaching of Ilocano language among third and fourth generation Filipino Americans in Hawaii, where almost ninety percent of Filipinos trace their roots to the Ilocos region,“ Consul General Jamoralin said. “Unfortunately, there is a considerable number of third and fourth generation Filipino Americans of Ilocano descent in Hawaii who have little or no knowledge of the Ilocano language, culture and traditions. We hope that through this endeavor, we could make the Fil-Am youth appreciate and understand their Filipino identity and roots through language,” she added.
The Filipino Community Center and the Candonians of Hawaii will provide additional information on the program and will start accepting applications from interested students by the third week of December 2014. END