SAN FRANCISCO: Sustaining decades-long ties, California’s multicultural city of Daly intends to forge closer linkages with Quezon City, its sister city in the Philippines.

Talking to visiting Filipino journalists at her office on April 29 (San Francisco time), Daly City’s Filipino-American Mayor Juslyn Manalo said she was looking at ways to increase exchanges with the Philippine city, including on progressive leadership and social development.

Daly and Quezon City are in talks for the ‘next steps’ of their relations, with the latter interested in knowing more about her city’s wastewater management model, Manalo added.

Daly City is also interested to share its firefighting apparatus and add to Quezon City’s equipment.

‘We’re looking at ways to support Quezon (City) with some of our firefighting apparatus that we can actually give over since they will be kind of getting the new firefighter apparatus and they were very open to that saying there has been a lot of fires,’ she said.

Meanwhile, the official hop
es to host Quezon City Mayor Joy Belmonte in the future.

‘I had a really amazing conversation with her and I know that she’s also very progressive in her programming and (we know) there’s a lot, so in any way that we can also exchange we’re looking at that,’ she said.

The Quezon City-Daly City sister city relations were established on Aug. 8, 1994 to promote cooperation in the fields of the environment, human resources and community development, science and technology, education and sports, tourism development, and trade.

The two renewed the sister city ties during the regular session of the Daly City Council on July 10, 2023.

‘Inspiring possibilities’

Manalo’s election as the first female Filipino-American mayor in Daly City shows the breadth of connections between the Philippines and the United States.

At present, she leads 100,007 constituents of diverse nationalities, at least 34 percent, or over 34,002 are of Filipino descent.

This number also makes Daly the city with the highest concentration of
Filipinos and Filipino-Americans in the US.

‘I grew up here in Daly City, a very diverse community and I serve all of my community. But I’m so proud of my Filipino heritage,’ she said.

‘With 34 percent of our kababayan (countrymen) here, I think it’s important to have representation. I am the first Filipina and so long overdue,’ she added.

Back in high school, Manalo said she was already surrounded by a large community of Filipinos but she always wondered why there was no female Filipino representing them in the office.

‘I didn’t think I was gonna be it, (that it) would come into fruition that I would be it and so we know that we need to create a pipeline so that the younger generation can see this as a pathway,’ she shared.

Early in her career, she became a community service worker providing direct service to Filipino World War II veterans.

Among her priorities is helping low- to moderate-income families find, defend, and sustain their housing.

She is also a strong advocate against Asian hate in Calif
ornia and has been working closely with Filipino community organizations such as the National Alliance for Filipino Concerns and the Filipino Community Center.

Source: Philippines News Agency