Meeting with Fundacion Santiago

Editor's Note:  
Hereunder is Zaldy's letter regarding the meet with Fundacion Santiago.  Those who were there were: Beth, Aimee, Kara, Zaldy, Nicholas, Anna and Oni.  Beth has volunteered to sponsor one lunch for the seminar (if necessary).  Nicholas said he can contribute to the heritage research requirement of the group.  Anna has volunteered to be of service to the BOLBOCs secretariat.  

Hi Guys,

We had a good meeting last night with Fundacion Santiago's Kara Garilao at the Milky Way. The plans for the workshop to train the volunteer researchers to dig more into the history of San Juan and its assets which includes the heritage houses. The point of a deeper research of San Juan history is to give more meat for the spill to be prepared by Fundacion together with the Department of Tourism for our future tourist guides for the heritage houses and the other tourist attraction in San Juan such as the bird watching, the ruins in Pinagbayanan, the butterfly farm, lambanog farm, panutsa factory, the acacia trees in BEC, the beaches and many others.

Mayor Manalo has given us the permission to use the ABC office at the municipio to be used by the 2-day workshop which will start on Thurs., June 5, at 8:30am. Kara together with Mike, who is the resource person for the workshop, will manage the workshop. The workshop would need to borrow any material regarding the history of San Juan on top of the books we already have.

A surprise and good news is that we were able to meet Nicholas Sy, who does archival research services specializing in Spanish documents. He is from San Juan, the granchild of Annie Sy who is the daughter of Ong Siong Pia, the pioneer copra buyer in San Juan. He has joined out Bolboc Heritage and will definitely be an asset to our organization. 

Beth, Sylvia and Joy and myself will be in San Juan to help in the workshop. Carmen and Duane of course is always there and also volunteered to assist. Maybe some other members can be there to. I believe this is a good experience for us. Please feel free to email, or contact me or Sylvia for any suggestions.

 Zaldy

See slide show for more photos.