Filipino American Youth Leadership Conference (FAYLC) Impact

I was chatting with a student that attended their first Filipino American Youth Leadership Conference (FAYLC) last summer. They are now a student at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and the FAYLC came up. They said:

It's so funny, like when I think about FAYLC, I didn't fully understand what was going on and how everything fits together until I got to UCLA. It made sense at FAYLC but I didn't have that passion about all these issues until I got here. I am so happy I went to FAYLC. I mean there are so many things that I learned from just that one weekend. I find myself constantly thinking about how the stuff I learned in FAYLC applies to the real world. I think about the activities we did like Pusoy'd or the strategies for a successful campaign...or all the other ones and I just realize how I can use that to do other things on campus. On Thursday, the committee I'm involved in was talking about LGBT (lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender) issues and I told them what we did during FAYLC. It turned out to be something Samahang Board might want to do with one of their general meeings. I have friends asking me to help with Pilipino Youth Empowerment Day (PYED)--it's like another conference for high school students--because I went to FAYLC and I have more experience on how the workshops are run and what type of things are talked about. I honestly never would have thought that I'd be taking so much from FAYLC and applying it to my life here. Thank you for really making such a big impact by hosting FAYLC. It means so much to me. FAYLC is something I would definitely love to be involved in again. I would love to give back to younger generations.

I responded that I could not take credit for the event because I just did logistics. The programming and implementation was all thanks to the Philippine National Day Association (PNDA) and a wonderful and dedicated group of organizers and counselors. Still, I take pride in being even remotely involved in such an impactful event--to be a part of something larger than me.