The Kuya/Ate Program is Bahay Kultura’s enrichment and leadership program for older children who are beginning to age out of our traditional elementary programming. Rooted in the Filipino concepts of Kuya and Ate, the program gives our older kids a new role within the community: not just as students, but as mentors, leaders, and culture-bearers for the children coming up behind them.

Through hands-on experiences in Filipino culture, food, art, storytelling, martial arts, games, and community traditions, participants explore what being Filipino and Filipino American means to them. They’ll create their own work, tell family stories, learn new cultural practices, and have opportunities to mentor and lead younger students.

The pre-teen years are an especially important time for children to begin forming a stronger sense of who they are and where they belong. Rather than simply teaching them about Filipino culture, Kuya/Ate encourages them to take agency over their own cultural identity: to ask questions, interpret traditions through their own experiences, tell their own stories, and decide what being Filipino American means to them.

At the same time, becoming a Kuya or Ate comes with responsibility. By reading with younger children, helping with activities, sharing what they know, and modeling leadership, our older kids begin to understand that culture isn’t just something we inherit. It’s something we participate in, take ownership of, and pass forward.

The program is intentionally designed to be modular and flexible from week to week. We understand that as kids get older, their schedules become busier and not every student will be able to attend every session. Each week is designed to provide a meaningful, largely self-contained experience so students can participate on the weeks they are available without feeling like they’ve fallen behind. Program pricing reflects this flexibility while allowing Bahay Kultura to maintain the staffing, preparation, and resources needed to offer the full program throughout the session. We simply ask families to let us know in advance which weeks their student expects to attend so we can plan staffing, materials, and activities accordingly.