Building a Community Archive: Preserving and Uplifting Stories of Filipino Labor and Migration

In April 2022, Watsonville Is in the Heart (WIITH), a research initiative based at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), launched a new digital archive that preserves histories of Filipino American migration, labor, and community in the Pajaro Valley region of California’s Central Coast. This article describes WIITH’s partnership between UCSC, The Tobera Project, and the descendants of the first Filipinos to settle in the Pajaro Valley. It outlines our methods for critical community-engaged archiving. It also shares the multiple ways in which the WIITH Digital Archive has significantly impacted project stakeholders in the university and the community.