Ten Filipino youth attended the Philippine Consulate of Melbourne’s Panagbenga Festival virtual tour and also participated in a dried flower arrangement session. The event, titled “Fiesta Filipinas: A Celebration of the Philippine Festival featuring “Panagbenga”, was held last 18 February 2022 at the Philippine Consulate Office in Melbourne.
In her welcome speech, Philippine Consulate General Maria Lourdes Salcedo said the Consulate is happy to learn that despite the participants’ thousands of miles away from the Philippines, they are still nurturing traditions such as festivals or fiestas.
Panagbenga is a month-long annual flower occasion in Baguio that includes floats covered with flowers, street dancing, presented by dancers clad in flower-inspired costumes, inspired by the Bendian, an ibaloi dance of celebration that came from the Cordilleras.
The teenage participants watched a video of the scenic mountains of the Cordillera region, the UNESCO Creative City of Crafts and Folk Art, the inspiring Ili-Likha Artists’ Watering Hole, the Tam-Awan Village, and the Bencab Museum.
Each participant was also given a Fiesta Filipinas box containing dried flowers for the flower arrangement session with co-host Paolo Abrera, together with Tet Mora teaching them how to be creative in doing the flower pieces. The box also contained mango and ube chips for them to appreciate Filipino snacks.
The Fiesta Filipinas event is organised by the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) in partnership with the Department of Tourism (DOT) and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA).
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