BÀBÀ BISAYA Fundraiser

For two years, we independently organized virtual language immersions in Sugbuanun, Hiligaynon & Waray, with teachers based in the Visayas, Philippines and for learners across the globe.

We are a transoceanic cultural heritage & creative media center promoting Bisayan islands languages & lived ecologies.

Together, we are co-creating a community for global diaspora and local roots to reconnect & revive our island cultures.

Donate to support us, as we prepare for another year of community building, and finally meet in-person for a Baba Bisaya co-working retreat in March 2023.

Donations directly support:

WHAT WE DO:

As a diaspora-based cultural initiative, we know what it feels like to be disconnected from our homelands, and how that impacts our health, wellbeing, and sense of identity.

We believe language IS the heart of healing, family, friendships, care, and culture. Language is an essential way in which we, Bisayan islanders in the global diaspora, can connect with our ancestral heritage and bridge divisions across oceans.

Atun Website

Two years ago, we developed an original curriculum to relearn Bisayan languages, based on embodied research into Bisayan cosmologies & spiritual ecologies.

We collaborated with cultural workers & educators from the Philippines to co-create the curriculum and hosted virtual language learning immersions in Sugbuanun (Cebuano), Hiligaynon & Waray.

These 9-week immersions support reconnections & rerootings for global Pilipina/x/o diaspora grounded in principles of mutually-engaged, trauma-informed, and decolonial learning processes.

We've stewarded 50+ language learners from lands of Musqueam, Squamish & Tsleil-Waututh (Vancouver, Canada), Mumirimina (Tasmania, Australia), Kingdom of Hawaii, Ohlone (Oakland, California), Seminoles (South Florida), Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi (Chicago, Illinois), Lenape, Munsee, Canarsie (New York City), United Kingdom, Manila, Philippines, & many more directions.

Throughout this process, we continued to share research, educating local & global communities about precolonial Bisayan heritage, contemporary creative and activist networks, and uplifting native islander ecologies.

Coming from the Lenape, Munsee, Canarsie lands of New York City, we’re now home in our island communities, actively involved in inter-island community organizing between Bantayan, Buglas (island known as Negros), Panay, Sugbu (Cebu) and across Visayan seas.

This March, we will hold our first in-person co-work retreat for our language teachers, learning facilitators, and administrative organizers.

This will be the first time we are all meeting in-person after virtually collaborating for the past two years.

For Spring 2023, we are preparing to host another 9-week language immersion for 3 Bisayan languages in Sugbuanon, Hiligaynon, and Waray (bababisaya.com/pagtuon-ta).

Next semester, we aim to provide additional scholarships & sliding scale payments for Philippines-based learners to support inter-island connections.

Your support helps us continue to build the vision of Bàbà Bisaya as a center for culture, language, media and arts of Visayan islands and peoples, stewarding global diaspora & supporting local roots through community activations and language learning.

WHO WE ARE:

Baba Bisaya is not an institution. We are islander peoples of migrant diaspora connecting communities. We independently invested our time, energy and personal funds into this heartwork of transoceanic & inter-island community organizing, against the systematic erasure of access to our ancestral languages.

Bàbà Bisaya is rooted in the relational islander process of building mutual trust & sustainable networks of care. Our commitment to language justice & cultural equity through community collaborations is truly a labor of love.

Although there are more Bisayan language speakers than Tagalog (the Filipino national language), there exists little public access to learning Bisayan languages, even in the Philippines. Even though Pilipinos have been migrating abroad for over a century, there haven't been accessible language learning schools beyond Tagalog, which dominates ‘Filipino’ nationalist discourse & identity. Our heartwork aims to deepen the plurality of islander identities, heritages and knowledges preserved in our ancestral languages.

This project emerges from years of community building in East Coast, Turtle Island, on ancestral lands & waters of Lenape, Canarsie, Munsee peoples (New York City), with Black, Indigenous, Asian, queer, migrant & working class communities.

From islands across seas, our vision is rooted in decolonial liberation, indigenous sovereignty and radical healing for co-creative culture-making.

We, the co-conjurers of Baba Bisaya, are queer femmes, from working-class & migrant families, children of healthcare & service workers, with ancestry in islander fisherfolk communities.

Despite our dedication to this heartwork, we have yet to receive a proper paycheck, as we used surplus funds from classes to continue cultural organizing on the ground.

Your financial support gives direct value to the often underappreciated care labor of community building, & the emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual commitment to social justice as a radical practice.

As an administrative staff of two people, doing full-time communications, social media, graphic design. coordinating across time zones, and on-the-ground community organizing, we wish to grow shared responsibility & equitable space-holding.

We believe that expanding our administrative and graphics team will directly support cultural creators in the islands through our model of communal collaboration.

If you have benefited from what we have shared, if we've inspired you to reconnect to your heritage, we’re reaching out for donations to continue supporting our heartwork!

Thank you for reading, sharing, & taking time to support! Daghang Salamat.