Nearly seven months ago, UTD psychology alum André Averion launched Bayanihan Press, a news publication designed to give DFW’s Filipino community a voice. After nearly forty published articles, covering everything from community events to local and national politics’ impacts on Filipinos in Dallas, the outlet has integrated itself into the slowly-blossoming network of events, groups and resources serving local Filipino Americans.
Launched Aug. 2, 2024, the publication is written and edited by Averion, who formerly served as the Outreach and Distribution Manager of UTD’s former student newspaper The Mercury, and is currently the Communications Chair and Website Manager of Pilipino American Community Endeavor, a nonprofit focused on advocating for the Dallas-area Filipino community. PACE currently hosts Bayanihan Press on its website. Averion said his journey toward joining PACE and launching the publication was a gradual progression coinciding with a lifelong struggle to understand his half-Filipino identity.
“I was raised here [in DFW], and … I lived in a small part of Fort Worth [where] there were barely any Filipinos at all,” Averion said. “And my parents wanted me to be raised [so] I would be all-American besides the principal foundations of what it means to be Filipino, such as valuing family and some basic traditions. I knew next to nothing of my culture besides that and food. So eventually I tried to meet other Filipinos in Keller, there were like four in my grade … and they were the same way. Their families had decided that for the betterment of their success in the future, that they should be more American, not Filipino. And that kind of stuck with me for a while.”
After he began attending UTD, Averion joined the Filipino Student Association and started learning more about Filipino culture, even becoming an executive officer. But he said the organization was mainly attended by non-Filipino Asian Americans and lacked the essence of what it means to be Filipino.
“It’s not like being Korean where they have K-pop and [all] that goes with that,” Averion said. “We have GMA Pinoy TV, which is like the trashiest soap opera you can find. And that’s kind of what we’re known for besides that and singing and weird food. So not a lot of people were really invested in being a part of that culture.”
Averion would find new perspective and direction through an unlikely source: a UTD marketing alum he was interviewing for a Mercury article. Fellow Filipino Mark Sampelo had made waves by co-founding the Lone Star Palengke, a festival celebrating Filipino culture that drew over 10,000 attendees in its inaugural year, 2022, and was working on founding a Filipinotown and resurrecting the inactive Filipino community center in South Dallas.
“I was still very much in the mindset of like, who am I? What am I doing here? I’m having my midlife crisis going through college,” Averion said. “And then I meet Mark, we have that conversation. It was supposed to be a 15 minute interview, [but] I took up [the] office time for two hours, we talked and talked about our experience.”
Sampelo told Averion that there were 80,000 Filipinos in North Texas as of 2020 — a number that PACE estimates has reached 100,000 as of 2024 — which Averion said he found hard to believe due to a lack of interaction between different Filipino families, businesses and groups.
“We didn’t know each other, we didn’t know where we were, what was going on,” Averion said.
Averion started volunteering with PACE shortly after graduating in spring 2024 and quickly became head of a brand-new department: communications. His responsibilities include all the journalism for Bayanihan Press, managing PACE’s website and working with its marketing team to network within the community, as well as promote events and the publication itself. Averion said he noticed how Filipino events and businesses are occasionally captured by local news outlets, but never consistently platformed — the driving force for him to found the publication.
“Knowing there’s at least 100,000 of us here with no stories being told, I decided it’s time that we start giving our reason for our voices to be heard, starting to centralize information so we can start talking to each other and kind of gain interest back in,” Averion said. “Even if people weren’t interested in being Filipino back in the Philippines, they could be interested in the community and a culture that’s growing here.”
Averion currently holds the record for most Mercury articles written by one person with over 100 bylines to his name. He said that dogged focus on work continued when he joined PACE, allowing him to excel in nearly singlehandedly running a publication.
“It’s a community that needs this kind of work,” Averion said. “Even if I’m the only person doing it, I know I won’t be [alone] for the long run, other people will take my place eventually … But at the very least, um, when there’s nothing at all, someone has to start it … And that’s more important to me than the struggles that come with starting this from the ground up. The mission, the vision and what this means for future generations, for families growing here, for businesses just starting up here after Covid, that means a lot.”
Oftentimes, Averion would find himself the youngest person in the room; Filipino town hall meetings and cultural events alike were primarily attended by seasoned professionals or older adults, and practically no college students showed up. One of Averion’s hopes is to connect younger generations with the local Filipino community and identity.
“It’s taking those steps so people don’t have to be like me where they don’t know their identity, that their parents are scared of them knowing their identity until they come find it for themselves and then get lost in the whole mess of what the hell is being Filipino,” Averion said. “People at UTD, whether you’re Filipino or just Asian American or just want to get more involved in that community, that culture, there’s opportunities to do so. There’s things after college, there’s a community here that ultimately, as big as it is, does still need help.”
After promoting the Lone Star Palengke in late 2024, Bayanihan Press has shifted toward political coverage following the 2024 general elections, honing in on what Filipinos in Dallas most need to know, while continuing to discuss events, businesses and notable people from the community. Readers can find the publication’s articles on PACE’s website and keep up with new releases through its Instagram, @bayanihanpress.
The name “Bayanihan Press” refers to the Filipino concept of bayanihan, where members of a community work together and assist each other to accomplish a difficult task, and that a foundational principle of the publication is kapwa, or a unifying identity shared by multiple people, according to Averion.
“The generation that’s in DFW, most of them I’ve met talked to miss the idea of being Filipino,” Averion said. “What’s the point of being Filipino when there’s no community to support you? There’s no resources directed towards you, there’s no one to talk about you if you’re Filipino … That’s what I’m hoping to change is being Filipino is okay. There are resources for being Filipino. We’re gonna have a community of being Filipino. There’s already a community, maybe not a center, but that will hopefully change within the next few years.”