Pilipinos Enlighten Indiana And The Midwest With The 2010 MAFA Conference

The same weekend that the FIND Spring Conference happened on the East Coast, and just one week after SCPASA held their summit on the West Coast, the Midwest Association of Filipino Americans (MAFA) met for their annual conference in Bloomington, Indiana at Indiana University.  Along with the Filipino Americans Coming Together (FACT) conference held in the fall, the MAFA Conference provides students in the Midwest the rare opportunity to meet and network in person, since the travel time between non-Chicago schools can range from two to eight hours.  Delegates also get to attend lectures that cover Pilipino-American activism, Pilipino culture, and current affairs in the Philippines.  This year's theme, “Children of the Sun: Different Stories United by the 8-Point Sun” held true this weekend as a the Midwest served as host to a headline performance from East Coast Pilipinos (Deep Foundation), a keynote speech from a West Coast Pilipina (Aubrey Aquino), and workshops facilitated by movers and shakers from across the country.  

The MAFA Conference first started at Marquette University in Milwaukee fourteen years ago, and is hosted by a new school each year.  Unlike FACT, which is annually hosted by a decades-old student organization, MAFA has recently been hosted by student groups with less than a decade (some with even half a decade) of experience under their belts.  While hosting MAFA has provided challenges to these young organizations, it also exemplifies the amount of hunger and passion students in the cornfields have.  Interestingly, the MAFA conference predates the actual MAFA executive board, which is a coalition formed by representatives from various schools across the region.  MAFA's purpose is to define goals for the Midwest Pilipino community to strive towards, and to act as a support network for upstart communities.  Several organizations in our region have fallen apart or disappeared entirely, but with the help of social media and conferences like this one, MAFA aims to prevent that from happening.  MAFA is also striving to become a legitimate non-profit organization, much like FIND is.

We asked Marisa Santiago, a full-time student at Indiana University (IU) and Head Conference Coordinator, what the MAFA Conference is all about:

This will the the 14th year of the MAFA Conference's existence.  It has been to many different schools, including the University of Illinois at Chicago, Minnesota, Northern Illinois University, and Purdue, among others.  However, this year is the first time the MAFA Conference has ever been hosted by Indiana University.  Similar to SCPASA, FIND or FACT, MAFA aims to educate young Pilipinos, Pilipino-Americans and those interested in the Philippines and its people of the nation's history, current issues, and popular culture.  This year we accomplished this through interactive workshops focusing on topics ranging from globalization and the Philippine labor export to the music of the Philippines and modern/hip hop dance (which is always a crowd pleaser).

Because the MAFA Conference itself is relatively well established in the Midwest, I thought it was only a matter of time before something like the MAFA organization would have been created; and lo and behold it did!  This is only MAFA's second year of existence and this year's executive board, especially, has tried to show that MAFA is more than just a conference, [it is also] a community.  While they are taking steps to grow MAFA with other events outside of the conference, like the upcoming MAFA Formal and possible philanthropic events, they still understand and remember that their roots stem from this conference.  Particularly, “Conference Within a Conference”, the meeting of the leaders of all the Midwest Pilipino organizations/associations that occurs at every FACT and MAFA.  The MAFA executive board and MAFA members have been nothing but supportive of the conference, and vice versa.  I don't see this relationship between organization and conference changing but only enhancing.

Both of the Midwest conferences (MAFA and FACT) close out with variety shows, as does some of the FIND conferences.  Much like how the conferences are a prime opportunity for networking and education, they also serve as the perfect time to showcase our talents to the rest of our dispersed community.  We talked to BakitWhy.com’s own Jon de Castro, Assistant Conference Coordinator, about the variety show he coordinated:

The Variety Show is a Midwest Conference tradition for FACT and MAFA where the delegates can unwind and be entertained after a packed day at the conference. In recent years, the FACT Variety Show has highlight a number of the Pilipino Cultural Dance troupes of the MAFA Organizations, as well as a number of hip-hop dance crews comprised of members from some of the conference delegates. In recent years, FACT has brought talent from outside of the Midwest such as: Alfa, Jay Legaspi, Melissa Polinar & Ruby Veridiano-Ching.
 
MAFA, on the other hand, has a different dynamic for their shows, while highlighting the Midwest’s talents in the performing arts, the recent years have seen talent that have brought a national spotlight to the MAFA Show. Artists like Gabe Bondoc, IBU, and Passion have shown the Midwest some of the best up and coming talent from around the nation.
 
When Marisa gave me the full authority to direct the Variety Show, I wanted to push the limits of what we have seen in the past. In past years, we have seen different performers come and go, but the layout of the show remained the same. Keeping this idea in mind, I decided to give the Variety Show a little bit more “oomph” by creating a party atmosphere. It’s actually pretty funny; DJ Ollie e-mailed me the exact night I thought about bringing in a live DJ to set the tone. I don’t recall the last time a live hip-hop act headlined the variety show, but in order to get the crowd in the mood for it, I thought adding a live DJ to make it feel like a party was the right way to go.
 
To be honest, I knew that the intermission would have a decent vibe when I told DJ Ollie to “treat intermission, as if you were in a club”, but I did not expect the kind of energy to leak from the people in attendance! I have to admit, the intermission was one of the highlights of the show. How many shows could say that?!
 
When constructing the Variety Show, an important element that I wanted to incorporate was, “knowing my audience”, which is partially why I arranged the show the way I wanted to. After carefully reviewing the acts over and over again, I wanted to create this constant, escalating and flowing energy, with Noel Kunz and DF bringing down the house in the very end of the show. I also wanted to add certain performers and elements to the show that people could also remember from that night, such as acts like Krystle Cruz, JR Aquino, Bagwis and 312. All in all, my job was to fully entertain people, which is what I hope I did.

We also asked Marisa and Jon why they took time out of their own schedules to put together the conference:

Marisa: "I guess it stemmed from being involved with the MAFA organization.  During the '08-'09 school year I acted as Events Coordinator for MAFA and fell in love with all the people and enthusiasm that is the Pil-Am scene here in the Midwest.  After becoming better friends with individuals from other Pil-Am organizations at different schools I realized I wanted to get IU's FSA as involved as possible with MAFA and what better way to do that than host the MAFA Conference!  There were many skeptics about IU hosting MAFA, many said that IU's FSA was just not big enough to pull off an event of this magnitude, but those "haters" only pushed me harder to prove them wrong.  Jon was also a great support for IU's ability to host and pushed me to place the bid to host MAFA in the first place.  But the main push (from the standpoint of a student at Indiana University) to host this conference is the fact that at IU, the spotlight isn't pointed in the direction of many minority groups on campus very often.  For one weekend, I wanted to show IU what an Asian interest group could do and that we do exist and should be noticed.  I wanted this weekend to be a step towards diversity acceptance on this campus.  I would hardly say I made a sacrifice of my time.  I consider it time well spent as long as people were able to walk away from the conference with a better understanding or a new knowledge of Pilipino culture or even a better tolerance of diversity.

Jon: I have always wanted to direct and coordinate a Variety Show of my very own. After years of consulting and bringing artists that I’ve worked with to the show, I always had it in my mind to coordinate V-Show one of these years. Event organizing and management are one of my passions so when Marisa told me that I would be the Variety Show coordinator, I could not help but say yes.

As assistant conference coordinator, I really wanted to give the Midwest delegates a bit of the experience that other Pil-Ams their age get to experience on the regular. That was the basis of us bringing in Phillip Geniza for a workshop. We really wanted to bring both the East and West Coasts to the Midwest for this event, and I cannot believe that what we envisioned actually turned out the way we wanted, I mean think about it: Krystle Cruz, JRA, Deep Foundation, PNOY Apparel all coming into Indiana for a weekend? What more could we have done for the eager Midwest delegates?

Bids have already been placed by MAFA member schools to host MAFA 2011.  After an informative, productive, and entertaining couple of weekends all across this nation, one can only imagine the potential the future holds.  While it remains important that each region pays attention to their specific needs and the problems their communities face, it is exciting to envision collaborations among SCPASA, FIND, MAFA, and all active Pilipino-Americans across the country.

Reated Links:

The Midwest Shines on Indiana as 2010 MAFA Conference Draws Near

UMCP hosts FIND, Inc. 2010 Conference: "Laban"

SCPASA Summit 2010: "Balikbayan"

Hundreds Of Pilipinos Attend FACT 09 In The Midwest