The Bay Area's Hub for Asian Pacific American Community Arts Since 1972
Caroline Calderon
Caroline Calderon is a queer Pinay originally from Los Angeles, currently residing in San Francisco. When she's not spitting poetry, singing, or playing the guitar, Caroline works with the Bill Sorro Housing Program of Veterans Equity Center helping individuals and families find affordable housing, and with Pin@y Educational Partnerships she teaches ethnic studies at the University of San Francisco.
Virginia Cerenio
Virginia R. Cerenio- is the author of Tresspassing Innocence (Kearny Street Workshop Press). Formerly with Westbay Filipino multi-services, Virginia now lives in Lake County where she teaches GED at the county jail.
Performers
Bernadette Sy
Bernadette Borja Sy founded the Filipino-American Development Foundation/Bayanihan Community Center in 1997 with her father, Dr. Mario Borja (d. 2004), and is the current Executive Director, and has worked in the South of Market neighborhood since 1999. As the director, Bernadette is responsible for the management of the Bayanihan Community Center, a community space established for the use of various organizations and neighborhood residents. She also ensures FADF’s involvement in the community, which centers on the needs of the seniors and families in San Francisco’s South of Market and advocates for functional, safe and adequate amenities such as parks, schools, affordable housing, and recreation, and community centers. She also sits on several nonprofit boards in Soma, including the Veterans Equity Center, Tenant and Owners Development Corporation (TODCO) , South of Market Child Care (SOMACC) , and the Alexis Apartments of St. Patrick’s Parish.
MC Canlas
“Ethnotourism docent” is one of numerous roles listed by MC Canlas on his resume, but most who know him in the Bay Area Filipino community would say that the modest Canlas is more of a curator. That role bridges Canlas’s early work in the Philippines as a university professor, academic historian, and political activist in the democracy movement with his achievements in California as a community leader, youth worker, newspaper columnist, and service provider. He has received numerous honors for his work, including the San Francisco Foundation’s Daniel Koshland Civic Unity Award, in 1999. He currently works for Bayanihan Community Center.