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Thursday June 14, 2018
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com MICHIGAN IN COLOR

EPYC for now, EPYC forever 
 
 

When My last piece 
about 
the 
National 
Federation of Filipino 
American 
Associa-
tions was written on a 
plane. So naturally,this 
NaFFAA piece is being 
written during another 
flight. I am currently 
on my way to spend a 
summer in Washing-
ton, D.C., and I can’t 
help but be thankful 
for all that the Empow-
ering 
Filipino 
Youth 
through Collaboration 
Ambassadors Program 
has done for me.
My start with EPYC 
almost never happened 
actually. It started last 
summer with an email 
forwarded by a good 
friend who was intern-
ing in DC at the time.
“If you haven’t seen 
this and are interest-
ed!” was the one line 
in her forward. And 
from the prospects of 
connecting with other 
Filipinx 
Americans, 
learning 
more 
about 
civic engagement, and a 
chance to better myself 
as 
a 
self-proclaimed 
Filipino 
American 
advocate, I was defi-
nitely interested.
I knew I had to apply, 
but the flaw that was 
holding me back then 
was a subtle lack of 
confidence. I had never 
done anythi ng on a 
national scale before. 
I know I harp on this 
a lot, but it’s still true, 
but growing up in small 
towns 
where 
corn-
fields are endless real-
ly shaped me. Although 
it grew a strong yearn-
ing for exploration of 
myself and my culture, 
I really thought work 
on large scales, like a 
national one, were for 
people from big cit-
ies. Before the EPYC 
ambassadors program, 
I thought that I was not 

qualified as someone 
who didn’t have a large 
Filipinx 
American 
community to rely on. 
But of course, I knew 
that wasn’t a valid rea-
son to not apply. I knew 
that if I didn’t give it an 
honest try that I would 
regret it. I spent many 
days 
rewriting 
my 
resume, my personal 
statement, and asking 
advice 
from 
trusted 
confidants; I ended up 
sending my application 
while I was at a wed-
ding in California using 
free, 
limited 
hotel 
Wi-Fi and minutes to 
spare on the deadline 
(very off-brand for me 
but such is life). When I 
got the acceptance let-
ter from Jason Tengco, 
the Executive Direc-
tor of NaFFAA, I was 
totally thrilled, to say 
the least.
The 
EPYC 
ambas-
sadors program didn’t 
start and end with a 
convening in the Bay 
Area. Like I said before 
in my last article, the 
EPYC 
ambassadors 
program as a whole 
gave me the tools and 
resources to be a more 
confident leader. But 
within that were lay-
ers upon layers of self-
discovery.
I always wondered 
what life was like for 
young Filipinx Ameri-
cans outside the Mid-
west. Because of EPYC, 
I have been given the 
privilege to listen to 
the lived experiences of 
the rest of the ambassa-
dors, who are now my 
friends. I am now able 
connect with my Pinoy 
peers all across the 
United States instead 
of speculate what dias-
pora looks like outside 
my own lived experi-
ence. I looked forward 
to every monthly webi-
nar because it means 
learning 
something 
new about important 

topics such as racial 
justice, 
media, 
and 
Filipino American his-
tory. Through EPYC, 
I was able to redis-
cover the strengths of 
my leadership that I 
already had all along.
And one of the most 
important things I’ve 
learned along the way 
is that there is power 
in 
mobilizing 
the 
youth--not only for the 
future but most cer-
tainly for the issues 
that we as marginal-
ized communities face 
daily.
My passion for civic 
engagement and advo-
cacy has even more so 
intensified thanks to 
NaFFAA 
and 
EPYC. 
Now that I am going 
to intern in DC, I 
would like to believe 
that EPYC has helped 
light my pathway to 
public 
service. 
In 
the more immediate 
sense, EPYC allowed 
me to expand upon 
my skills of student 
organizing 
through 
a 
capstone 
project 
where I collaborated 
with many other lead-
ers in many different 
Filipinx American and 
AAPI communities to 
increase civic engage-
ment in the Midwest.
Now that my first 
year with EPYC is com-
ing to a close, my hope 
is to continue with 
NaFFAA and the youth 
branch for years to 
come because I believe 
so much in this mis-
sion. From my perspec-
tive, EPYC is a pipeline 
to get aspiring, young 
Filipinx 
American 
leaders out into the 
world--for the culture 
and social good.
I 
cannot 
wait 
to 
see the next cohort 
of 
ambassadors 
and 
the amazing things to 
come. My advice? Be 
brave. Be unapologetic. 
Be EPYC.

I’ve only ever seen my 
mother cry three times. One 
of those times was when the 
audiologist announced I had 
a hearing loss and would 
have to wear hearing aids. 
As strange as it sounds, I am 
thankful for being born hard 
of hearing. I believe that it 
has had a unique impact on 
the way I’ve grown up and 
has allowed me to be more 
empathetic to people with 
other disabilities and even 
other social identities in 
which I have privilege.
However, I didn’t always 
see my hearing loss in such 
a positive light. When I 
first started my education, 
I went to a private school 
where nobody realized I 
had hearing loss. Because 
of this, the teachers always 
reacted negatively to me 
because I never listened to 
their instructions. Since it 
seemed I wasn’t being obe-
dient, the teachers and my 
parents incorrectly believed 
that I had a learning disabil-
ity. This was the beginning 
of my feeling like an outcast 
throughout my first years 
of school, especially since I 
had neon pink hearing aids. 
After I switched to public 
school, I spent a lot of time 
in speech therapy because I 
wasn’t speaking as properly 
as the other students my age, 
making me feel like an alien 
in my surroundings. 

I was also detached from 
my culture. At the time, out-
dated psychological studies 
led educators to believe that 
children growing up learn-
ing two languages at the 
same time had less fluency 
in both languages. How-
ever, modern-day psycho-
logical studies have proven 
the opposite: Learning two 
languages at once is ben-
eficial to children’s learning 
experiences. However, the 
educators and profession-
als at my schools constantly 
warned my parents not to 
speak in our native language 
with me at home. As a result, 
I speak extremely broken 
Telugu (my native language) 
and struggle to understand it 
as well as I might have been 
able to. 
While 
I 
eventually 
became able to overcome 
this and come to acceptance 
with my hearing loss, it 
wasn’t always easy to do this. 
A lot of the incidents I expe-
rienced at a younger age also 
made me feel even more self-
aware about any differences 
I had from other kids.
Entering high school, I 
learned how to channel the 
pain and frustration I con-
tinued to feel about my hear-
ing aids into more creative 
endeavors such as writing 
and art. While art helped me 
discover a whole history and 
culture behind my disability, 
writing helped me express 
feelings from my childhood 
that I had suppressed for 

such a long time.
I had always felt I wasn’t 
good enough, and my hear-
ing aids had become a tangi-
ble reminder of my isolation. 
Working on approaching 
this became one of my goals, 
and I slowly began to realize 
how much having a hearing 
loss had helped me grow. I 
often felt isolated because I 
didn’t know any other kids 
with hearing aids, but I’ve 
learned, slowly, to accept 
this aspect of my identity.
And yes, I don’t view this 
as a flaw or a disability any-
more. After learning about 
the beauty of deaf culture 
and learning how people 
who are hard of hearing and 
deaf have been able to form 
a community and express 
all their pain and frustra-
tion, it’s become clearer to 
me that this is an identity of 
mine, not something to be 
fixed or to be ashamed or 
scared of.
To anyone reading this 
who may be isolated because 
of a hearing loss, I can tell 
you that I have found sol-
ace in learning about deaf 
culture, making art and 
expressing 
my 
feelings 
through writing. It’s crucial 
to deal with any feelings of 
isolation you may be hav-
ing about your identity, no 
matter what it is and it’s also 
important to learn about the 
history behind since his-
tory will always continue to 
empower and validate your 
identity.

By 
 
 
SWATHI 
 
KOMARIVELLI

MiC CONTRIBUTOR

By CHRISTIAN PANEDA 

MiC Senior Editor 

PHOTO COURTESY OF NINA CEDRO 

Hear Me 

