Kapwa Collective | We are Kapwa People. The Malaya Project

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KAPWA

The Kapwa Collective is a group of Filipino Canadian artists, critical thinkers, and healers who work across different academic and applied disciplines. We believe in the values of inclusivity and accessibility, and we work towards bridging narratives between the Indigenous and the Diasporic, and the Filipino and the Canadian. We facilitate links among academic, artistic, activist, and other communities in Toronto.

The Kapwa Collective functions as a mutual support group based on the core value of “kapwa”. Virgilio G. Enriquez, known as the founder of Filipino Psychology or Sikolohiyang Pilipino initially proposed a concept of personhood centered on the core value expressed in the word “kapwa”. In the words of the scholar Katrin de Guia:

Kapwa is a Tagalog term widely used when addressing another with the intention of establishing a connection. It reflects a viewpoint that beholds the essential humanity recognizable in everyone, therefore linking (including) people rather than separating (excluding) them from each other. Enriquez felt that this orientation was an expression of ‘humanness at its highest level’.

- Kapwa: The Self in the Other, Worldviews and Lifestyles of Filipino Culture-Bearers, 2005

KAPWA

We are Kapwa People.

The Malaya Project - In collaboration with Barangay Los Angeles, a Filipino LGBTQ community organization, photographer Deney Tuazon and filmmaker Gregory Pacificar, come together to create The Malaya (Free) Project. A photography project highlighting the lives of various proud gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer Filipino/as.

malayaproject.blogspot.ca

“These are the images I needed growing up, and the images that Pacificar and Tuazon needed, too. The Malaya Project takes our search for community, especially as LGBTQA people of color, and presents it to us: The role models we have and maybe wish we had.”

- Whitney, writing about The Malaya Project for Autostraddle

Photo essay with Nico De Castro

He started singing in a boy band in the Philippines,
now he begins a new chapter in his life as an advocate.
Nico welcomes us into his life for a brief moment.
Here is what he wanted to share.

malayaproject.blogspot.ca/2012/07/nico-de-castro.html