President’s Corner

There are great platforms that UPAABC already has institutionalized to engage seasoned alumni with newer graduates who made Canada their new home.

As an example, the current board organized successful professional mentorships in partnership with the Philippine Consulate General in Vancouver, dubbed “Employment Integration in BC Through Industry Mentorship,” where seasoned and professionally established UP Alumni served as mentors to newcomer UPians in their settlement and integration to Canada. The industry mentorship program aimed to help our Iskos and Iskas integrate into their pre-arrival professions in Canada. Among the industry areas covered in the mentorship program are Project Management and Financial Services, Human Resources, Data Analytics, Trade and Entrepreneurship, and so on. We plan to continue this mentorship program and engage more of the seasoned UP Alumni across industries and professions and tap our young successful professionals to share their experiences as well to newcomer Isko’s and Iska’s.

We will continue to enhance our social events, which provide opportunities to connect and network among the members. Further, we will continue to engage our newcomer, Isko and Iska on the Board either as officers or volunteers in the various departments.

We, through the previous board, have started to create mentorship opportunities and career development programs for younger alumni in organizing Industry Mentorships that have been very successful in reaching out to newcomers to Canada and meeting along the way UP Alumni.

We contributed to the settlement and integration of our newcomers Iskos and Iskas and provided them the platform to engage and network with our successful alumni professionals. We want to expand the engagement of our successful professionals by organizing more industry and mentorship events.

Along that line, we want to enhance our networking platform through our Membership and Engagement Division so we can continue to build on a directory of UP Alumni Professionals and their contacts. We will engage as well with local service provider organisations and offer our expertise in service delivery.

By offering our Alumni a platform to engage and communicating to them that they are important and we value them.

We will exert effort to know them and make them known. We will collaborate, partner, and work with them. We will listen to them and meet at a level where we are on the same page on why it makes sense to not just be an active member but an engaged member of UPAABC. We will celebrate their success and recognize them the best we can.

We have started in the current board the Industry Mentorship program along with organizing the Filipino International Student Convention with the Philippine Consulate General in Vancouver, and we will continue to do this and enhance engagement of the entire UPAABC community. For UP, we will enhance our scholarship programs, which is core to the existence of UPAABC, by supporting scholars representing all UP Systems and engaging more of our members to support our future leaders as sponsors. We will enhance membership engagement by providing them various platforms to contribute to the causes and initiatives of UPAABC. On a personal level, I will encourage the new Board to navigate and explore funded skills training programs to support newcomers to Canada in their settlement and integration and collaborate with learning institutions and service provider organizations in the delivery of such trainings.