13 September 2013 - A team from the Philippine Consulate General in San Francisco flew out to “Emerald Isle,” Kodiak, Alaska, to offer consular services to kababayans there from September 07 to 08 under the Consulate’s annual Consulate-on-Wheels/Wings (COW) program.

The four-person team, headed by Consul Reichel Quiñones, extended consular services to over 200 people over the two-day outreach, processing 208 passport applications, 24 notarial documents and civil registry reports, and 23 applications for reacquisition of Philippine citizenship.

Filipinos in Kodiak expressed their appreciation for the COW program, which significantly reduced the processing time and cost for availing themselves of consular services from the main consular office in San Francisco. The average cost of a typical round-trip ticket from the Alaskan island to San Francisco is about US$1,200.

The consular team expressed its thanks to the Filipino-American Association of Kodiak, which has spearheaded local efforts to coordinate consular outreaches to the island for the past five years. Through its efforts, the Consulate has been able to conduct regular annual outreaches to Kodiak to attend to the consular needs of Filipinos living and working there.

The Philippine Consulate in San Francisco, through its COW Program, conducts annual outreach programs to various locations in the ten states under its jurisdiction: Alaska, Northern California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Northern Nevada, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.

For more information on upcoming Consulate-on-Wheels outreaches, or to search for a COW coming to your area, visit http://www.philippinessanfrancisco.org/philippines-sf/consular-outreach-sf/ or follow the Consulate’s Facebook page on http://www.facebook.com/PCGSF. END