Peña Family
Marissa and Tony Peña have a strong history of support for UBC, having established an endowed entrance award for undergraduate students in 2014. The award is given to students involved in the Filipino community on the basis of both academic excellence and financial need.
“With many Filipino parents coming to Canada for work, their kids back home often struggle in their absence,” Marissa explains. “When families are eventually reunited in Canada it can be hard for students to integrate into a new culture while they are getting to know their parents again at the same time. They often suffer academically because of pressure to achieve and the stress of trying to fit in.”
Tony adds, “Students who have received our award have been in touch to say how helpful it is to have that financial support. Their stories really inspire us.”
After arriving in Canada from the Philippines in 1978, Tony and Marissa operated a successful money services and shipping business for many years, serving the Filipino community in Vancouver.
In 2005, Tony, together with about five other friends, they established Societe Lifeline Society to support cancer research and raise awareness of non-related stem cell transplant. In 2014, with permission from the society’s board of directors, they renamed it the Peña Family Foundation and turned their focus to support for secondary and post-secondary students.
The Peñas’ charitable giving is inspired by their firsthand experience with English Language Learners in Vancouver high schools, notably John Oliver Secondary and Sir Charles Tupper Secondary. “We met with the Vancouver School Board multicultural liaison officer to find out where the needs were greatest,” Marissa says. “We got involved in the ACE-IT program that helps students with technical training, and then we found out about the Kababayan Academic Mentorship Program (KAMP) program.”
KAMP is a collaboration between the Filipino Students Association at UBC and the Vancouver School Board. It delivers tutoring and mentorship to newly-arrived Filipino high school students. Every summer, KAMP brings students to the beautiful Loon Lake Lodge and Retreat Centre in UBC’s Malcolm Knapp Research Forest to connect with nature in their adopted province of BC.
“We went to Loon Lake, and we were really impressed by the programs that these Filipino university student mentors had created for their mentees,” Tony says. “So we started giving to the Loon Lake Redevelopment Fund in the Faculty of Forestry.”
The Peñas have always supported education and leadership, having had university scholars since 1988. In 2013, Tony and Marissa established an endowment fund in Tony’s alma mater, Ateneo de Manila University, a Jesuit run university. They continue to support university students in the Philippines through the alumni association in B.C. and in Vancouver through the Peña Family Foundation Scholarship Program.
For Marissa and Tony their gift to the UBC Library is a natural extension of their relationship with UBC “We were really inspired by the way mentorship works at KAMP, and we wanted to support the development of more student leaders at UBC,” Marissa says. “The new upgrades to this room will make it more multifunctional and a better space for learning.”
She adds, “We also want to encourage people to give to causes they feel strongly about. There are so many ways to make a difference at UBC.”