About

Contact Information

Robyn Rodriguez (Director)
rrodriguez@ucdavis.edu

Allan Jason Sarmiento (Archivist)
ajsarmiento@ucdavis.edu

Mission Statement

The mission of the Welga Archive, Bulosan Center for Filipino Studies (WA-BCFS) is to provide access to documentary and ephemera material regarding the Filipino and Filipino American experience. To ensure access of collections, WA-BCFS will digitize and make available applicable documents and photographs for academic purposes. A series of oral history interviews will be presented to supplement archival holdings.

From the Grape Strike and Beyond: Expanding to Filipino American Activism History

The Welga Project was originally founded to promote Filipino American labor history, specifically the history of Filipino American involvement with the UFW movement and the Delano Grape Strikes. After conducting oral history interviews and collecting archival collections, we realized that labor history greatly intertwined with activism history. As such, we are broadening the scope of content of the WPDAR to include collections focusing on Filipino American political and social activism.

Shift from Archive to Digital Hosting Repository

As of 2015, the Welga Project exhausted its allocated funding and has reverted into a volunteer organization. As a result, we are currently lacking the resources to physical conserve any new collections. However, we are still committed to making Filipino American history accessible through our online website, and will continue to accept digital reproductions of your collections. In addition, we are also offering free digitization services for any potential donors who are willing to have your personal files scanned and photographed. 

The Bulosan Center for Filipino Studies

Carlos Bulosan was a migrant worker, labor activist and writer. His novel, America is in the Heart, continues to be an important piece of activist-scholarship, while a fictionalized account, America is in the Heart is an important chronicle of the real-life the struggles of the earliest cohorts of low-wage Filipino workers. Bulosan’s writing in and beyond America is the Heart, moreover, served to galvanize those workers, as well as the Filipino community more broadly, to organize themselves to fight against exploitation. The Bulosan Center for Filipinos Studies Initiative aims to continue Bulosan’s legacy by uplifting the voices of the most marginalized in the Filipino community in the United States and the diaspora through community-engaged research and broadly disseminating knowledge about Filipinos for advancing their rights and welfare. In short, the Bulosan Center for Filipino Studies, once established, would support research, education and advocacy.