For all its years of successes, trail-blazing and league-leading, a few attempts to break new ground that fell short of expectations won’t faze Mabuhay Festival a bit. It remains in top spot among the Filipino community’s cultural extravaganza and trade shows in the Greater Toronto Area. So says a cross section of community members that we polled up after the event.
Still reeling from the sad experience of practically robbed of finances and manpower, the sponsoring organization, Philippine Independence Day Council, is in an uphill struggle to restore Mabuhay Festival to its former glory.
It will be remembered that in the recent past, PIDC was preyed on by wolves dressed as angels that exploited the organization from within. Its community building effort was soon hijacked for personal and family promotion.
Not only was this a big blow to the subsequent PIDC leadership, it fractured into bits the community fabric as well.
Now the questions are asked. When a community leader abuses the public trust, duplicates with impunity a community-built festival that took years to perfect, runs off with funds raised in the name of PIDC and the community, never mind that regularly she berates, ill-treats fellow community volunteers, and thumbs her nose at us, how can this happen? Where is the outrage?
Mabuhay is now the iconic community cultural festival, a Filipino trademark event, that Filipinos all over North America look forward to.
In its small way Balita has contributed to that success, being a consistent supporter and media partner since the festival’s beginnings. We have invested time in promoting it and we will not stand by to see it falter.
This year’s Mabuhay Festival sadly did not go well as planned. A new volunteer was assigned as artistic director and practically screwed up the whole thing. If it is not broken then don’t fix it – that is an established adage in our civilization, particularly fit for our event.
But why this prima donna was allowed to change everything and run things her own way is simply beyond common sense and understanding. Of course she single-handedly mismanaged the good flow of our regular shows that ran smoothly everywhere else.
Many performers were left angry and disgusted. In hindsight, we now know that running a festival of this magnitude is not for amateurs or the inexperienced. Or, good intentions alone or expertise in other fields are not enough, we should stick to the appropriate artistic experience and background next time.
Moving forward, it is a big challenge not only for the PIDC leadership but for the community as a whole to seriously review the minor setbacks in this year’s handling of the Mabuhay Festival, and work together to fix it, and restore it to its former pedestal.
We still have the support of The Filipino Channel, this is assuming that their executives were not totally turned off by the prima donna attitude of this year’s artistic director.
Let us rise and learn our lessons. Let us be aware of our fellow volunteers and their motives and agendas, and kick them out before they can do damage on us again.
We have built the Mabuhay Festival out of good faith, in pure service to our community and heritage, from our own resources and individual talents, there is still plenty of this collective wealth around to rebuild and reinvigorate our national treasure. Let us work.
As for entrance fees, let us rethink why and for whom are we holding the festival. It’s for ourselves firstly, a good reason for kababayans to get along together, to enjoy and appreciate our talents together.
A family of four to come and enjoy the Mabuhay festival should not have to spend $100 just to get in, pay parking of $21, and inside have to pay another maybe $50 for food, and buy some goodies from the booths. Five to $10 dollars would have been enough for general entrance as we have business sponsors, and there’s rental revenues from the venue, insurance, etc.
Mabuhay also had extra income from the gala, which was reported to have made money. Let us not be greedy. In business it is wise to go by volume so people would come back. You hit them once for a big profit and you will never see them again.
The leaders should now be more protective of the funds, and be more giving to our hardworking volunteers. There should just be one Treasurer in charge of the finances and revenues, and a clear system for handling funds down the line.
In Balita, we have experienced being paid by PIDC pageant organizers from their own personal chequing accounts, which should have come from the organization’s own treasurer.
Also, there were so many volunteers dressed for the occasion but who were just sitting by doing nothing. Let’s us tighten up those loose ends, accept volunteers but have some task for them.
We have so much to offer to our kababayans and the general public. Our food booths were excellent and reasonably priced. Some booth renters reported to us that they made money despite the decrease in attendance. Can you imagine if we sustained the attendance the same as last year?
Our numerous performers were generally excellent. A few have become a disappointment, either that they have become passé, or maybe we are just tired of listening and watching them from all over other places.
The cultural groups are wise to have different shows every year so they continue to keep us entertained. There were excellent dance groups, both youthful and middle aged, that we can be proud of. The line and male hula dancers were really fascinating. Their music was inviting such that one felt compelled to join in their dances. The TFC contest was a good crowd drawer and we are very pleased with the winner this year.
For the shows they should be scripted to avoid unnecessary talks. There could have been an hour of wasted time if you sum up the blurbs of the emcees while they were exchanging idle dialogues. Introduction of performers should only be one or two sentences and not their whole bio.
The fashion show had a very nice start that featured Mutya ng Pilipinas Overseas Bea Santiago and Miss Manila Aura Joy Mitchell and her entourage. However, it had long introductions of each segment.
In our area, we heard, “o ayan na naman si Jeff, gusto naming makita ang karugtong, sana tuloy tuloy na lang”. All of a sudden, nawala na ngang tuluyan. We later learned that the fashion show was cut off for lack of time to the big disappointment of the models who spent many Sundays rehearsing.
Assign experienced people at the gate and not students who obviously did not know what they were doing. I am not complaining that our names Balita or Tess and Ruben Cusipag were not on the list of media because we were saved by Pete Mauricio, a PIDC officer who came to our rescue.
I did not take it against these kids because they are probably new and were not properly briefed, but for others it could be very irritating to stand there while they were looking through a bunch of lists that produced nothing.
Mabuhay Festival had the misfortune of being practically robbed of its crown because of disorganization and weak leadership. This is the biggest event of our community and naturally deserves competent people that could serve us well, and save us from volunteers with personal agendas and evil intentions.
We are seasoned volunteers and we take enormous pride in doing it. PIDC is lucky to have dedicated, competent and still committed volunteers. There are a few names we can list. The event officials should get rid of those that are useless and just want to see their faces on the newspapers.
The show is the heart of any big event so we should be very careful in choosing who to run it. Do not be misled anymore. This year’s programming took a big nose dive, thanks to the prima donna, know it all artistic director. Hopefully we all learn from it.
To our volunteers, especially those in leadership positions – nagbolontaryo ka pagbutihin mo na, otherwise just give the job to those who are heartily willing to do it, or else stay at home and take care of your grandchildren.****