GILAS Continues to Gain Support from the Fil-Am Community

8/10/2008 | Ayala Foundation USA

They are growing by the number every day: friends and supporters of GILAS (Gearing up Internet Literacy and Access for Students) as well as the Ayala Foundation. These past few weeks, the AF USA team in Manila has been busy meeting up with friends, new and old, who have expressed their interest in GILAS and other projects.

Three "balikbayan" visitors were Leo Legaspi, Mon Dizon and Winston Arpon. Leo, who currently resides in New York and is a member of the New York/Tri-State Volunteer Team has been a staunch supporter of AFUSA ever since. While on a visit to Kapitolyo High School in Pasig, Leo also generously shared his ideas for GILAS’ sustainability using the high school as a pilot site. Mon Dizon of the Ten-Dollar Initiative group, an initiative that aims to establish equity in education, saw the GILAS lab in Esteban Abada High School in Manila and pledged to continue exploring potential partnership with AFUSA or Gilas. Winston Arpon, who hails from Maryland, visited the T.Paez High School in Tondo along with the AFUSA team. Arpon is interested in bringing Internet connectivity to Leyte National High School, Leyte being his and his late wife's hometown.


AFUSA also had another VIP guest in the form of Paul Kazarian, Founder and Managing Director of Japonica Partners, an entrepreneurial co-investment firm that provides entrepreneurial returns with low risk for accomplished money managers. Traveling with his daughter Sema Kazarian and Kevin B. McDonald, also of Japonica Partners, Kazarian was in Manila to conduct a benchmarking study on AFUSA as a diaspora philantrophy organization. Among his many objectives was to study GILAS as an example of a philantrophic initiative.


With many more projects and fundraisers all waiting in the pipeline, GILAS is truly steadily gaining momentum in the Fil-Am Communities as a worthwhile way of giving back to the Philippines.

To know more about how you can support GILAS and other AFUSA initiatives, log on to www.af-usa.org.