KAMP’s history is tied to the development of Kababayan UBC: the Filipino Students Association at the University of British Columbia. In 2007, a group of Filipino-Canadian students founded Kababayan UBC in order to create community for themselves on campus. Recognizing the challenges they faced in getting to UBC and the challenges faced by friends, family and other young people in the community led to the creation of the Kababayan Academic Mentoring Program, or simply, “KAMP”.
In the Spring of 2008, in a small room multipurpose room at Sir Charles Tupper Secondary School (Tupper), a group of newly arrived Filipino high school students and a handful of UBC students met for the first of weekly tutoring and mentorship sessions. KAMP has continually been delivered at Tupper since 2008, and briefly at John Oliver Secondary School, with the help of Kababayan UBC Mentors and Joy Jose, Multicultural Liaison Worker with the Vancouver School Board.
Since 2008, the need for KAMP’s services has increased as the number of Filipino students entering the public education system in Metro Vancouver continues to rise. As a response, a group of Kababayan UBC and KAMP alumni formed a working group in the Spring of 2015 to help with the development and expansion of KAMP. The product of that working group is the Kaya Community Society. Kaya is the not-for-profit society which hosts KAMP. We are excited to continue to build on the last eight years and look forward to working with our community to meet the challenges faced by our youth.
