MEA revives FIESTA, pays festive tribute to HE staff

The Ateneo Management Engineering Association (MEA) brought holiday cheers into campus grounds with the long-awaited return of FIESTA, a celebratory Christmas dinner party honoring the contributions of contractual Higher Education (HE) staff to the Ateneo community.

Held last 10 December 2024, 124 guests attended the event in the College Covered Courts, with employees coming from the Ateneo de Manila Multi-Purpose Cooperative (AMPC), JGSOM Student Enterprise Center (JSEC), Kraver’s Canteen - IRH, and Ebai’s Cafe and Pastry - Cervini.

“FIESTA po ang isa sa mga inaabangan namin taon-taon dahil sila yung naglalaan ng oras at panahon para mag bigay-saya at simpleng pasasalamat sa aming mga miyembro ng staff bawat Pasko. Masaya ako na nakabalik itong muli at sana tuloy-tuloy ito habang ako'y nasa Ateneo pa,” said Pau Gallardo, a staff member of WOKWEI, one of this year’s JSEC stalls.

Flaunting a vibrant ‘Pinoy retro night’ theme, the program featured a number of party games, energizers, and dedicated segments for the employees from the different Ateneo establishments to get to know each other, with the help of their tables’ assigned facilitators. Multiple song and dance performances from groups among the invited guests also lit up the FIESTA stage. 

The evening concluded with the project core team’s heartfelt rendition of Filipino Christmas classic “Star ng Pasko.” With the generous support of P&G, Shopee, Golden ABC, Smart, Unilever, and NutriAsia as official event partners, care packages containing grocery baskets, loot bags, and clothing were also distributed as tokens for the guests as FIESTA came to a close. 

“Super nag-enjoy po ako. Mula sa mga palaro hanggang sa mga giveaways and food, maraming salamat, MEA!” Gallardo added. 

This year’s FIESTA is the 8th edition of an event that was first brought to life in 2012 as one of MEA’s flagship projects. However, annual execution was temporarily discontinued in 2019 after facing various logistical challenges, and multiple plans to bring it back were unfortunately halted by restrictions from the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Treading a project that had no immediate predecessor was definitely no easy task because the entire core team had to build everything from scratch. Throughout planning and implementation, constant reminders were given on what FIESTA stands for: an extension of Corporate Sustainability as we recognize the importance of the campus workers in creating a conducive learning environment for Ateneans,” noted Aiji Umemori, one of FIESTA’s project managers, along with France Anido and Aries Dino.

The planning phase of the project lasted for more than four months, with key partnerships being sought and finalized as early as the previous Intersession term. Moreover, the reintroduction of FIESTA was one of incumbent MEA president Dominic Tan’s (4 BS ME) primary platforms. 

“Initially, MEA had a number of projects that were essentially geared towards stakeholder engagement, systems thinking, and social awareness. However, most of these were absorbed in A.Y. 2023-2024 as a means of optimizing organizational resources as we swung back to full onsite classes. Yet, there were many times in the past year wherein the core values of these initiatives were missed by the organization. As a result, I found that reviving FIESTA could embody those core values. I viewed that the project would allow us to externalize the organization in such a way that we would be able to do something greater than ourselves and create impact on the lives of the contractual HE Staff,” stated Tan. 

The project was also planned in alignment with “Salamat Sa Tumutulong (SST)”, a similar event and the flagship project of Sanggu’s Department of Student Welfare and Services (DSWS), with FIESTA and SST catering to different Ateneo departments and offices. 

While it is quite early to be certain of anything just yet, both MEA and its partners are hopeful that FIESTA can continue to be implemented for the years to follow.