About the project:

Saritaan: Filipino and Filipino American Stories of Ilocandia and the Pajaro Valley is a Watsonville is in the Heart (WIITH) research project focused on transnational stories of migration, agrarian life, and kinship between California’s Pajaro Valley and the Ilocos region of the Northern Philippines. 
Between 2025 and 2029, WIITH will work with Pajaro Valley and Ilocos-based community partners as well as undergraduate researchers from UC Santa Cruz and Pangasinan Polytechnic College (PPC) to collect novel primary materials that shed light on bi-coastal connections between the two regions.

Objectives:

• Deepen relationships between Pajaro Valley and Ilocos-based partners
• Expand the experiential learning of PPC and UCSC students through humanistic research
• Extend WIITH’s Community Digital Archive to include impacts on and conditions in migrant sending communities throughout the Ilocos