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April 15, 2018

The Welga Project, Filipino American Educators Association of California, and the AB123 Pilot Program cohort have drafted a sample K-12 Curriculum in accordance to Assembly Bill 123 (K-12 Instruction regarding the Filipino Farmworker Movement). To see the sample curriculum, please click this link.


April 14, 2018
The Filipino Educators for Ethnic Studies Workshop at UC Davis was a great success! We are one step closer to creating k-12 curriculum for Filipino American History

https://www.facebook.com/WELGA65/posts/766145456916203


May 30, 2017

Portions of the Donald Twohey collection have been digitized and uploaded to the Welga Digital Archive. Twohey worked for the California Agricultural Labor Relations board, and the collection contains correspondence regarding the history of strike activities of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee, National Farm Workers, and the United Farm Workers. 


 

October 6, 2015

The Welga Project will be sponsoring a display at the Larry Itliong Celebration hosted by Assemblymember Rob Bonta on 10/19/2015. Happy #FilipinoAmericanHistoryDay2015!

 


 

September 30, 2015

October is Filipino American History Month! We're participating in a bunch of events in Northern California over the course of the month. Dr. Rodriguez will be discussing the Welga Project at the Third Filipino American International Book Festival this Saturday, October 3 from 12:30-1:30PM at the Koret Auditorium in the SF Public Library. https://www.facebook.com/events/602032376604114/

 


 

September 29, 2015

October is both Filipino American History Month & Archives Month! To commemorate this dual celebration, The Welga Project & Archives is participating in the Sacramento Archives Crawl. There will be a demo on the Welga Digital Archive, along with a display of the poster exhibits from the Bold Step event.

The Sacramento Archives Crawl will be held this Saturday, October 3 from 10AM go 4PM. The Welga Archives will be held at the Sacramento Public Library- Central location at 828 I St., Sacramento, CA 95814.
Entrance is free!

If you're in Sacramento, please try to stop by!

http://sacarchivescrawl.blogspot.com/

 


 

This September marks the 50th anniversary of the Delano Grape Strike. To commemorate this historic event, the Delano chapter of the Filipino American National Historical Society and the Welga project will be hosting a celebration Labor Day weekend.

The weekend’s events will kick off on Saturday, September 5, 2015 at the Filipino Community Hall, the historic building where the strike vote was taken and the headquarters of the first years of the Grape Strike. The program will include Assemblyman Rob Bonta as the event’s keynote speaker as well as presentations by strike veterans, scholars, community activists, and local community leaders. Also slated is a screening of Marissa Aroy’s CAAM-funded and Emmy-nominated documentary, Delano Manongs: Forgotten Heroes of the United Farm Workers. Aroy, whose family is from Delano, will be present for the screening.

The Delano Grape Strike began on September 8, 1965, when thousands of mostly Filipino American grape workers walked off of the vineyards in Delano. Filipino labor leader Larry Itliong Itliong, of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee union (AWOC, AFL-CIO), asked Cesar Chavez and his mostly Mexican worker’s association, the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), to join the strike. On September 16, 1965, the NFWA voted to join the AWOC. In 1966, the AWOC and the NFWA merged to form the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee. Cesar Chavez was named director, and Itliong served as the UFW’s assistant director from 1966-1971.The Delano Grape Strike sparked the farm labor movement of the 20th century and catalyzed the very California grape strikes that became synonymous with Cesar Chavez and his cause and that of the United Farm Workers.

For more information on the event, please visit the FANHS/Delano Chapter Facebook page and see the event schedule. For more info on ticketing visit their Eventbrite page.

 


 

September 10, 2015

The Welga Project on the radio!

Dr. Rodriguez was recently featured on the Insight program on Capitol Public Radio, the Sacramento-based NPR Affiliate Station.

http://www.capradio.org/news/insight/2015/09/10/insight-091015a/

 


 

 April 17, 2015

Yesterday our archivist, Allan Jason Sarmiento presented the Welga Digital Archive at the National Council for Public History Conference at Nashville, Tennessee. For more information, see http://ncph.org.

 

 


 

March 31, 2015

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
PROJECT WELGA CELEBRATES CESAR CHAVEZ’S BIRTHDAY
Friday, March 27, 2015
Release date: Tuesday, March 31st, 2015
On the occasion of Cesar Chavez’s birthday, the Welga Project joins the Chicano community in celebrating his birthday. In particular, the Welga Project celebrates the interracial, Filipino-Mexican immigrant labor solidarity that Chavez, along with his colleagues Larry Itliong and Philip Vera Cruz, exemplified. The definition of solidarity is the “union or fellowship arising from common responsibilities and interests, as between members of a group or between classes, peoples, etc.” To celebrate Chavez’s birthday, the Welga Project’s archive will specifically highlight the interracial solidarity expressed in the 1965 Delano Grape Strike which will mark its 50th anniversary this coming September.

The Welga Project, (welga is the Tagalog term for strike) aims to bring the hidden history of Filipinos’ leadership and engagement in the 1965 Delano Grape Strike to light through a dynamic, publicly accessible digital archive which houses oral histories and other material from strike participants and supporters. Additionally, the Welga Project will produce a teacher’s resource guide to support the implementation of AB123, legislation recently signed into law by the state of California, which mandates the teaching of Filipinos’ contribution to the farm worker struggle. This project was made possible with support from Cal Humanities, a non-profit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Visit www.calhum.org. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication do not necessarily represent those of Cal Humanities or the National Endowment for the Humanities. It is also led by Dr. Robyn Magalit Rodriguez of the Asian American Studies Department at UC Davis.

According to Rodriguez, “Immigrant communities were and continue to be pitted against each other yet we have many examples of times when we have come together. It is our responsibility, as Filipinos, to honor the solidarity between the Filipino and Mexican community. We do this today, by honoring Cesar Chavez, together with the Mexican community and commemorating the work he did in building lasting ties between us. We invite the public to access the archive on March 31, 2015, Cesar Chavez's birthday, when we will launch a teacher's guide on the topic of 'interracial labor solidarity.'" To access the Welga Digital Archive follow this link: https://welgadigitalarchive.omeka.net.
Facebook: www.facebook.com/WELGA65
Instagram: http://instagram.com/welga65
Tumblr: http://welga65.tumblr.com

 


 

March 9, 2015

WELGA! Project RECEIVES GRANT AWARD FROM CAL HUMANITIES

Davis, CA.) — Cal Humanities has recently announced the 2015 Community Stories grant awardees. The Welga! Project has been awarded $9982.92 for its project entitled “Welga! Filipino American Stories of the Great Grape Strike of 1965”

Community Stories is a competitive grant program of Cal Humanities. Grants are awarded to projects that give expression to the extraordinary variety of histories and experiences of California’s places and people to ensure that the stories can be shared widely. These narratives help us find our commonalities, appreciate our differences, and learn something new about how to live well together. The mission of the Welga (meaning "Strike" in Tagalog)! Filipino American Labor Archives is to preserve and ensure access of documentary and ephemera material pertaining to the history of Filipino-American activism, with a greater emphasis on farmworker activism of the 1960s. To ensure access of collections, the Welga! Filipino-American Labor Archives 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.

“With our state’s incredible diversity, fostering communication and connecting people to a range of ideas is vital for our general welfare,” said Ralph Lewin, president and CEO of Cal Humanities. “Our grant award enables awardees to pursue the important work of engaging new audiences in conversations around stories of significance to Californians.”

Since 2003, Cal Humanities has supported approximately 400 story projects and granted nearly $3 million to enable communities to voice, record, and share histories—many previously untold or little known. Through video, photography, murals, zines, documentary theater, audio projects, and more, these collected stories have been shared with broad audiences, both live and virtual. Cal Humanities is an independent non-profit state partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. For more information on Cal Humanities, please visit www.calhum.org.

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Welga Project Launch Event

Courtesy of Aj Press of Asian Journal

The Welga Project (welga is the Tagalog term for strike) aims to bring the hidden history of Filipinos’ leadership and engagement in the Delano Grape Strike of 1965 to light through the creation of a dynamic, publicly accessible digital archive which will house oral histories and other material from strike participants and supporters. Additionally, the Welga Project will produce a teacher’s resource guide to support the implementation of AB123, legislation recently signed into law by the state of California, which mandates the teaching of Filipinos’ contribution to the farm worker struggle. On October 24, 2014 from 7-9pm at the Eastside Arts Alliance Center in Oakland, CA, the Welga Project will be formally launched. Professor and Filipino immigrant rights activist, Robyn Magalit Rodriguez, serves as the Welga Project’s Director.

The launch of the Welga Project will include a screening of the Delano Manongs  by Marisa Aroy, cultural performers and a photo exhibit featuring some of the initial material collected for the digital archive. Information about the Project will be disseminated and the student and teacher applicant who have been selected to participate in the Project as community researchers will be announced.

The Asian American Studies Department, UC Davis, the University of California Humanities Institute and Cal Humanities are supporting the Welga Project.