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Page added on June 28, 2013

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UPAA Alberta holds its Scholarship Fundraising Event

by Quay Evano

According to the office of the UP Scholarship and Student Services, a significant portion of UP Students, also colloquially known as Iskolars ng Bayan (Scholars of the Country) belong to the middle and low income families. Many of these families struggle and can barely afford the tuition fees and other school expenses that keep on increasing every year, even if UP, the country’s state university, has one of the lowest tuition fees in the Philippines.For this reason, the University of the Philippines Alumni Association of Alberta created a scholarship program to help less privileged but Filipinos who deserves to study in UP, home of the country’s best and brightest. The association successfully held its first Scholarship Fundraising dinner and dance party on June 8, 2013 at the Polish Canadian Cultural Centre, which was attended by UP alumni in Alberta and their guests.

In her speech, UPAA Alberta President Consuelo Munar stressed the importance of education. “You and I believe in the importance of educational opportunity and you are here to make an unimaginable impact to someone’s life. You are a blessing to individuals whom you may never know, individuals whom you may never see. But you are giving these individuals the opportunity to flourish. The individuals are UP students who are talented; they possess brilliant and critical minds. They are students with tremendous leadership skills. But their dream of pursuing a good university education is at stake. The financial resources required to achieve their full potential are in shortage,” she said.

The keynote speaker for the fundraising event was Mayi Arcellana-Panlilio, PhD, who graduated magna cum laude from UP in 1977 with a Bachelor of Science degree. She was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in 1979 to pursue graduate studies at the University of Hawaii and with a scholarship from the US Agency for International Development, at Cornell University, where she obtained the Master of Science Degree in 1983. She obtained her Doctor of Philosophy in Molecular Biology from the University of Calgary in 1993. She served as UPAA Calgary’s seventh president.

Speaking to her fellow UPians, Dr. Arcellana-Panlilio asked them the greatest lesson or the greatest thing that their UP education has given them. It became a trip to memory lane for all the members, reminiscing their halycon and glory days in the different campuses of UP all over the Philippines. The members gave several answers such as their UP education gave them confidence, assertiveness, social activism, determination, never ending desire to learn, service to the country, etc., but it all boils down to the belief that their UP education made them strive to be the best person and the best Filipino they can be.

There were performances from the members, a raffle draw and dancing after the main program.

For the UP alumni in Alberta, the scholarship fundraising is their way of giving back to their beloved alma mater, because they believe that the youth is the hope of the country as proven by the last line of the UP Hymn: “Mabuhay ang pag-asa ng bayan.”

(For UP alumni who would like to get in touch with the UPAA Alberta, kindly visit the association’s website: www.upaaalberta.org.

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