LOS ANGELES – Two mission teams of the Filipino Caucus of the California Pacific Annual Conference CALPAC will go to Mindanao area this February and August respectively. The first mission will rebuild the old Dagumbaan United Methodist Church and the second one is the advocacy group that will address the plights of the poor and minorities in Davao area.

This was learned from the Rev. Paddy Padilla of the La Palma United Methodist Church, the newly installed president of the Filipino Caucus. This is the seventh mission team sent to the Philippines since the inception of the Filipino Caucus in 1972.

LOS ANGELES – On Saturday, March 10, 2012, 101 Catholic elementary schools from throughout the Archdiocese of Los Angeles will meet at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum & Sports Arena for an academic event that parallels the athletic competition prevalent in schools. Over 1,000 top students in grades 6-8 will be participating in this spirit-filled competition. Jo Solomonson, former principal at St. Stephen Martyr School in Monterey Park, serves as the Chairperson for the Academic Decathlon.

The Catholic Schools Academic Decathlon was founded in September, 1989 by Dr. Mark Ryan who was then a junior high teacher at St. Aloysius School in south-central Los Angeles. What began as a tiny competition involving Catholic junior high students from the greater Los Angeles area has grown to become a statewide event involving Catholic junior high students from across the United States.

LOS ANGELES – The Asian Pacific American Legal Center (APALC), a member of the Asian American Center for Advancing Justice, in partnership with the Filipino American Service Group, Inc. (FASGI), is providing a free immigration and citizenship clinic from 10am – 4pm, Friday, Feb. 10, 2012 in Historic Filipinotown. The clinic will be held at the FASGI Community Wellness Clinic, housed on the 6th floor of the Silver Lake Medical Center at 1711 W. Temple St. in Los Angeles.

“Citizenship is a cherished status that many immigrants seek, but the process of becoming a US citizen can be complicated and confusing,” said Joyce Noche, supervising attorney for APALC’s Immigration and Citizenship Project. “This clinic will hopefully help to demystify the entire process to becoming a naturalized citizen for members of the Filipino American community.”

OVER the course of 2011, great strides were made throughout the Golden State in protecting Californians where they are most vulnerable to secondhand smoke (SHS) exposure – their homes. Numerous state, county, and city officials have recognized the need to address SHS in multi-unit housing.

At the state level, the California legislature passed SB 332 this past September, which clearly states a landlord’s authority to ban smoking on their residential properties. Although landlords have always had the authority to implement policies, including smoke-free policies, pertaining to the well-being of their tenants and their buildings, some landlords had been hesitant to do so because they were not able to find language explicitly declaring that authority. Effective January 1, 2012, the SB 332 authorizes “a landlord of a residential dwelling unit to prohibit the smoking of tobacco products on the property, in a dwelling unit, in another interior or exterior area, or on the premises on which the dwelling unit is located.”