Founded in 2004, the Filipino Community Center is dedicated to providing a safe space where Filipino families can access services, receive support, and build community. We foster and develop community empowerment, grassroots leadership, advocacy, and organizing to address the immediate and long term issues of our communities locally, and in the Philippines. Ten years ago, a group of Excelsior parents, schoolteachers, and community leaders set out to support hundreds of Filipino immigrant airport screeners in the Bay Area who were unjustly laid-off in the post-911 anti-immigrant hysteria. We addressed this pressing issue and also the long-standing unmet needs in the San Francisco Filipino community, and we envisioned a thriving community with equal access to education, health, and decent livelihood. The FCC in its earliest stages sought to provide basic services and a community gathering place in District 11. The original vision and the early work of the FCC already pointed us to a future grounded in the lives and struggles of everyday Filipinos We believe in bayanihan, where people know their neighbors and work collectively in building strong communities. We work to increase our collective capacity to address our immediate and long term needs through organizing, advocacy, and service. We build civic participation and grassroots leadership to strengthen our community and the larger society.