Every February, the invitation arrives in the group chat. Sometimes it's a flyer with clip-art hearts and a cursive font that hasn't been fashionable since the Clinton administration. Sometimes it's a personal message from a Tita you see once a year. The message is always the same: the Valentine's Ball is coming, and the organization needs the youth to be more involved.

What they mean, you will learn, is that they need you to arrive two hours early. They need you to carry the centerpieces from the van to the ballroom. They need you to set up the folding chairs, tape the tablecloths down, and figure out why the Bluetooth speaker isn't connecting to the DJ's laptop from 2009. They need you to do all of this, and then they need you to sit at the back tables and be grateful for the opportunity to participate.

This is what youth involvement looks like in the traditional Filipino-American organization. It looks like manual labor with a dress code.

The Time Machine

I want to be clear: I have nothing against a good party. The Filipino community in Michigan knows how to throw a gathering, and there is something genuinely beautiful about a room full of people who share a language, a history, and a specific kind of humor that only makes sense if you grew up eating rice for every meal.

But walking into the Hearts and Harmony Valentine's Ball this past weekend felt less like attending a community event and more like stepping into a very specific time machine. The year was 1992. The disco ball was spinning. The DJ was playing a medley of Air Supply and Celine Dion. The centerpieces were silk roses in gold-painted vases. The emcee made three jokes about finding a spouse before the night was over.

And in the corner, three young people in their twenties — college students, I think, or maybe recent graduates — were quietly rearranging chairs that had already been arranged, because someone decided the layout needed to change forty-five minutes before the doors opened.

No one asked them what they thought of the layout. No one asked them what they thought of anything.

What "Involvement" Actually Means

Here is the speech that gets given at every Filipino community event, in some variation, every single year: We need the youth. The youth are the future. Without the youth, this organization will die. We are calling on the next generation to step up and carry the torch.

It is a beautiful speech. It is also, in practice, a lie.

What the organizations mean when they say they want youth involvement is not what the words suggest. They do not mean they want young people in the room when decisions are made. They do not mean they want new ideas about what events to hold, what causes to support, or how to spend the budget. They do not mean they want to be challenged, updated, or redirected.

They mean they want young bodies to do the physical work of maintaining an infrastructure that was designed for a community that no longer exists in the same form. They want us to carry the boxes, run the Instagram account, and buy the $75 tickets. They want our energy without our opinions. They want our presence without our power.

And when we don't show up — when we build our own spaces, our own networks, our own events that don't require a formal gown and a silent auction — they shake their heads and say the youth don't care about their heritage anymore.

The Honest Conversation We Need to Have

The Valentine's Ball is a fine event. I mean that sincerely. There is a generation of Filipino-Americans in Michigan for whom that kind of gathering is genuinely meaningful — a connection to a social world they built from scratch when they arrived in this country with very little, and made something warm and lasting out of it. That deserves respect.

But respect is a two-way transaction. And right now, the exchange is badly imbalanced.

If you want the next generation to care about your organizations, you have to give us something worth caring about. Not a seat at the back table. Not a box of centerpieces and a thank-you at the end of the night. A real seat. A real vote. A real conversation about what this community needs in 2026, not what it needed in 1992.

We are not your setup crew. We are not your social media interns. We are not your proof that the organization is still relevant.

We are the community you keep saying you built all of this for. Start acting like it.

A Note to the Organizers of the Hearts and Harmony Ball

The event was lovely. The lumpia was excellent. The three young people who rearranged those chairs deserve a proper thank-you — and an invitation to the planning committee. Not to carry things. To decide things.

That's the difference. That's always been the difference.