The founders of Phil-UK met at the ‘Awareness, Respect and Co-operation’ events organised by former Ambassador Bautista in the early 2001. We found that we shared the realisation that unlike other ethnic groups, young Filipinos in the UK did not have a voice in society. We felt that this was causing us to lose our identity and meant that we couldn’t play an active role in shaping our community.

We decided to form a group for second-generation Filipinos in the UK. Our aim was to enable young Filipinos to be a positive and visible influence to Britain’s cultural diversity.

From then on, we started projects that got us involved in our community including:

* Phil-UK Website
* RICE Newsletter
* Filipino Youth Forum
*’Between Two Cultures’ Video Project

We were very active in the early part of this decade but it was just before blogs, Facebook and YouTube so it was tricky to meet up, coordinate and recruit new people.

As with most groups of young people, other priorities in life took over and eventually, we stopped meeting. I felt that it was a shame to let our efforts die out so rebuilt the website and continued things online.

Now Phil-UK carries on as an online information hub for other community groups that I manage on my own. You can see us a precursor to the new crop of Filipino groups like Philippine Generations and filmefilms that were born as the social networking sites took off.