About

Watsonville is in the Heart (WIITH) is a community-engaged research initiative based at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC). WIITH is a collaboration between the Tobera Project, a grassroots Filipino American organization in Watsonville, UCSC faculty, graduate students, undergraduate students, and descendants of the Pajaro Valley manong and manang generation. Manong (older brother) and Manang (older sister) generation refers to the first group of Filipino migrants to settle in the Pajaro Valley between the 1920s and 1940s.

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WIITH team members digitizing Liz Tana’s collection at the first community archive drive in 2021.

Community-Engaged Research

We look to “critical community-engaged” methods to address apprehensions regarding university researchers appropriating and manipulating histories of marginalized communities. In WIITH, we position community members as expert researchers and leaders who direct every step of the project (McKay 2022). In an attempt to work against prevailing power structures within academia that center a single or omniscient authorial voice, we commit to an ethics of co-creation and dialogue.

WIITH Objectives:

  • Amplify overlooked Filipino American histories
  • Apply community-driven methodologies 
  • Increase accessibility 
  • Highlight sources that expand knowledge of  Filipino American history on the Central Coast
  • Center undergraduate education and student agency

WIITH Projects:

  • Community Digital Archive
  • Oral History Project
  • Exhibitions
  • Education & Curriculum