My interpretive plan focuses on community outreach and education. My goal is to get kids and students interacting with the I-Hotel at an early age, fostering a personal connection with the site in a manner defined by the individual. Later on, I would provide students with the opportunity to grapple with the physical site’s legacy of community organizing and solidarity, with the hopes of them becoming stewards for the site and leaders for both the Filipino American community as well as other community organizations.

Short Term Plan:

My plan will focus on 3 levels of outreach, revolving around the theme of I-Tel, emphasizing the importance of telling individual and shared stories. I-Tel days are bi-monthly events open to families and their children, each with a corresponding theme, such as ‘Family’ or ‘Community.” At the elementary level, the center will host a monthly I-Tel day, where families can bring their children for storytelling of Filipino folk tales, stories from the Manongs (original I-Hotel residents) and other community members of their time in the Philippines. In doing so, parents will have a free recreational activity for their children that fosters a personal connection to the physical space.

Mock up of I-Tel Arts & Crafts

At the intermediate level (6th to 8th grades,) I-Tel days will give young adults more agency in sharing their stories. Manilatown will turn the tables on who is telling the story by giving the students an opportunity to share their experiences via arts, crafts, and poetry/ language arts. The theme for intermediate level students will build upon the day’s theme by adding a more specific subtheme.

Mock up of I-Tel Internship Blog

At the high school/college level, the internship program will have a new curriculum that aims to foster critical and well-informed leaders that have a greater understanding of the context of the I-Hotel. Each week will have a learning objective and corresponding reading material. To share this learning, there will be a weekly blogging/ vlogging prompt to be published on the official I-Tel tumblr blog. In doing so, this learning can be shared with the greater public.

Long Term Plan (25 Years):

The goal of my interpretive plan is to get the next generation of Filipino Americans to invest into the I-Hotel’s legacy and mission of bringing justice to the Filipino community at an early age. The elementary level activities depend upon volunteers, which can be leveraged off the internship program. At the intermediate level, the I-Hotel could publish an anthology of select student poetry, in addition to digitizing the art and literature onto their website for fresh content. From the internship program, as well as the collective of students that are ‘raised’ with the I-Hotel, I hope that a handful will feel compelled enough to give back to the program by leading it in the future. With the I-Hotel becoming a more distant event in the past, these programs will utilize the fall and rise of the I-Hotel as main learning point, but will focus on the a grander concept of shared heritage and community solidarity.