Lucena fest sends poor youths to college

STREET dancers garbed in colorful costumes perform during Lucena City’s annual mardi gras-inspired festival, the Pasayahan sa Lucena. DELFIN T. MALLARI JR. / INQUIRER SOUTHERN LUZON

LUCENA CITY—The annual Pasayahan sa Lucena Festival has turned into a fund-raising activity to support the education of poor students.

Arween Flores, this year’s festival chair, said proceeds of the event would go to the city government’s college scholarship fund to support qualified students for one school year. The number of beneficiaries would depend on the amount given by festival sponsors, Flores said.

“We all have to join hands to ensure the bright future of our youth by providing them with free and easy access to college education,” Mayor Roderick Alcala said.

Some 1,600 college students are currently under the scholarship program of the local government at City College of Lucena.

“Pasahayan sa Lucena” was started in 1987 by the late human rights lawyer Euclides Abcede, then Lucena’s officer-in-charge, and Aguinaldo Miravalles, then local chief of the Bureau of Internal Revenue.

It was originally intended as a three-day merrymaking patterned after the world-famous carnival in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil and in New Orleans in the United States.

The festival was meant to help change the image of Quezon province, then known as a hotbed of communist insurgency during the martial law regime of President Ferdinand Marcos in the 1970s.

It also promotes Lucena’s rich tradition and customs and highlights products like “tinapa” (smoked fish), the city’s top commodity under the One Town, One Product (Otop) program of the Department of Trade and Industry, and the local noodle dish, “chami.”

With this year’s festival theme, “Tara na sa Bagong Lucena” (Let’s go to the New Lucena), the organizing committee offered a variety of activities meant to attract tourists, which culminated Monday to coincide with the Feast of St. Ferdinand, the city’s patron saint.

On Saturday, the parade featured street dancers, floats showcasing papier-mâché figures, local officials and other sociocivic organizations.