Iskwelahang Pilipino at Lowell Fest Offers Taste of Philippines

Photo Credit by Liam Crampton

For one weekend a year, in downtown Lowell, the second-largest free cultural folk festival in America takes over the streets. Tens of thousands of people crowd the area, with people of various backgrounds waving their homelands’ flags as they parade down the road. Some people perform traditional music, while others serve flavors of their native and ancestral countries.

If you were at the Lowell Folk Fest that took place on July 25 - July 27, you might have seen a huge line of hungry people curve around the corner of the sidewalk near Boarding House Park. Well, that long line of people came looking to eat some pancit, lumpia, turon, and more of Iskwelahang Pilipino’s delicious Filipino cuisine from their booth.

Iskwelahang Pilipino is a volunteer-based Pre-K-12 Filipino cultural school founded in 1976, the only one of its kind in the state of Massachusetts. The school is home to a community of Filipino Americans and other supporters that spans across four generations, allowing students opportunities to grow closer to their Filipino heritage. Every year since the festival began in 1987, students, families, and community members of all ages volunteer to spend their weekend cooking traditional Filipino food on site for the festival’s attendees, and every year, they are a smash hit.

Myra Liwanag, who has been serving as the school’s executive director since 2018, grew up in Massachusetts to Filipino immigrant parents who came over in the 1970s. Liwanag was part of the first-ever graduating class of Iskwelahang Pilipino. She’d meet her husband at the school, whose mother, one of the school’s original Co-Directors, successfully spearheaded the initiative for an Iskwelahang Pilipino booth at the Lowell Folk Festival.

“We have always been blessed at Iskwelahang Pilipino with Titas and Titos who are really good cooks, so it wasn’t a heavy lift at the time,” Liwanag said.

But what started as a few families rolling out their grills to cook for one weekend every summer has since evolved into a grand operation with over 150 volunteers. The outdoor booth had three grills, several more woks, a large kitchen operation, and a serving line of students ready to provide for their customers. Whether it’s a first grader giving free samples while people wait in line, or an elder cooking pancit in the wok, for those three days, everybody had a job to do.

The collaborative effort of the Iskwelahang Pilipino community is part of what makes the weekend magical for those involved, they said. Liwanag discussed a Filipino concept known as Bayanihan. The concept is all about the spirit of communal unity and coming together to work toward a shared goal. Much of Filipino culture is rooted in family and community, and for Iskwelahang Pilipino, this event presents the opportunity for volunteers to come together as a community and help produce something that goes beyond their own solo capabilities.

“All of Iskwelahang Pilipino is achieved through the Bayanihan spirit, but at Lowell, they can experience it for a weekend, and they’re part of it,” Liwanag said.

Liwanag talked about how this event has created such strong bonds between families and community members, recalling several volunteers telling her about the friends they made while working the booth.

“People will tell me all the time that the closest friends that they made at Iskwelahang Pilipino, they made at Lowell working side-by-side, rolling lumpia, chopping vegetables, cooking at the wok. It’s because you’re together and working side-by-side, you’re not in class paying attention to the teacher. You’re like, what are you going to do? You’re going to shoot the breeze and you get to learn to work together, so you get to really get to know each other,” Liwanag said. “Nothing builds community more than working together toward a shared goal.”

Iskwelahang Pilipino also emphasizes the importance of supporting the families in the community that have stood alongside them for generations. This booth is the biggest fundraising event the school has, and is a primary reason they are able to keep their tuition low. It’s a key reason why the school has stuck around and thrived for almost fifty years.

But not only that, the opportunity for several generations of families to share an experience like this is one that you can’t find just anywhere. How often is it that you see three or four generations of a family working at the same place, sharing that memory? It’s a rare sight. The experiences of these people’s lives are all so different growing up in different times, but for this one weekend, they can accomplish something together that they can all talk about.

“We believe that if you participate in an Iskwelahang Pilipino as a family, that your family grows stronger. Because you have a shared experience to talk about, that can bridge across generations. You’re talking about culture, you’re talking about tradition. And all of that moves from talking to lived experience at the booth.” Liwanag said.

Liwanag also talked about how, as different generations come in, they bring something new to the table, improving the booth. She talked about her father and how, in the early days of the booth, he used scissors to cut the pancit noodles, a blistering task. But as the booth continued to grow over the years, it was a later generation of volunteers that suggested he try out a cleaver or a knife to make things more efficient, and her father has not looked back since.

Bridging generations like this is not an easy thing to accomplish, but the folks at Iskwelahang Pilipino are clearly no strangers to hard work and care. Lilly Bolandrina, who currently serves as Iskwelahang Pilipino’s communications coordinator, is one of many alumni of the school in her family. Bolandrina has worked the booth both as a student volunteer and now as an alumna, and she remarked on being able to see her once lived experience be reflected in the younger generation.

“It’s nice to have that perspective of seeing the reins get passed on and know that something that you felt when you were a student. When I was a student, I was like ‘I’m the only one that can do this, this is so important, this is my character, this is my personality’. And seeing that blossom in the next generation and seeing current students feel that same pride in the same role that I had is like so enlightening and so empowering to see that Iskwelahang Pilipino will continue to grow and these kids will always be proud of the things that make us special and to be able to share that at the Lowell Folk festival,” Bolandrina said.

Bolandrina also remarked on the pride the kids have in being able to share their culture with others. With the Philippines being an underrepresented group in the United States, it is a special moment for those involved when people are lined up around the block to engage with a piece of your culture. For younger students learning about their culture and identity, what better setting could there be to be imbued with that sense of pride in who they are?

“I think it’s a great place for us to have that confidence that we don’t usually have in our day-to-day lives, and the Lowell Folk Festival brings that out for us, and that makes it really special,” Bolandrina said.

Similarly, Liwanag mentioned that their booth is also an opportunity for a diasporic community, such as Massachusetts Filipinos, to make space and raise awareness of their existence in these areas.

“We also want to raise awareness in New England that Filipinos are here, that we’re a part of New England. This booth is one of the most tangible ways that we do that,” Liwanag said.

Well, their presence has certainly been felt with many of the Festival’s regulars. Liwanag and Bolandrina both recalled memories of customers filled with joy, knowing that this was the one time of the year they could eat their favorite Filipino food, even though the majority of their customers are not Filipino.

“We’re seeing such a diverse group of people come to Lowell for the festival itself whether that be like the music that they have, the performances, the arts and crafts, or people native to Lowell and they’re learning about the Philippines from the first time and they’re trying our cuisine for the first time from our food booth,” Bolandrina said.

The two of them talked about families who would order food in bulk every year and fill up several Tupperware containers so they could enjoy the food after the festival was over. It’s a special moment for these community members to see those outside of the community be so excited about their food.

“To see people who aren’t Filipino be that excited about Filipino food and be that happy to have it makes all of us so proud of ourselves. It makes us all feel like no matter what chaos is happening in your day-to-day life, that you and your culture are bringing so much joy to somebody,” Bolandrina said.

Liwanag, spending some of her early life near Lowell in Tewksbury, was able to witness the formation of both the Lowell Folk Festival and Iskwelahang Pilipino’s place in it. When the Festival was established, Lowell was in need of a community rebuild as it was dealing with economic struggles. However, the Lowell Folk Festival ended up being exactly what the city needed to find its light and recover.

“Growing up, Lowell wasn’t a place that you went to hang out, and I lived right next door in Tewksbury. This festival had a really big influence in changing that,” Liwanag said.

This past May, the Lowell Folk Festival announced that the National Endowment for the Arts would be withdrawing its $20,000 grant for the festival, a difficult obstacle to overcome. However, that did not stop the festival from bringing in an astounding 150,000 people this year, many of whom stopped by Iskwelahang Pilipino’s booth for a meal, maybe two, or maybe dinner for the next week.

Liwanag wrote a letter in support of the Festival after the grant was pulled. She ended the letter with this statement:

“For decades, the Lowell Folk Festival has brought our community together in a special way, allowing us to share our heritage and strengthen bonds both within our group and with the city as a whole, while also contributing to growth and prosperity in the region.”

To the group’s delight, on Aug. 4, the Lowell Folk Festival announced that its grant had been reinstated after appealing. This announcement was a sigh of hope and relief for those like Liwanag who are closely tied to this festival and understand its importance to the community and beyond. With a tough challenge officially defeated, the festival can continue to thrive year after year with Iskwelahang Pilipino by its side.

The Lowell Folk Festival is near and dear to the hearts of Liwanag, Bolandrina, the rest of the folks at Iskwelahang Pilipino, and many more. It’s more than just a weekend to sell food, but a unique opportunity that brings the community together to share their culture, grow closer, and radiate Pinoy pride.