life we can all agree that filipinos love basketball we love it so much that you can find makeshift basketball hoops on every other street corner of the philippines according to a recent new york times article have growing up is vacationing with my whole family during labor day weekend to the east coast filipino basketball league competitions that my cousins would compete in i myself have never competed in basketball and still have a of resentment towards my dad for not teaching me how to dribble a basketball even though i have a killer free throw the pride and sense of community that that is built from basketball  dozens of filipino basketball teams across the five boroughs two the new york metro area upstate new york and in long island during this episode we will learn more about what drives the film community into competitive basketball leagues and  daycare and the father of the three most amazing kids in the world corps me molesta and r j ocampo our next guest speaker is marc anthony  brooklyn bred filipino american currently working at n y u winthrop and formerly as j p morgan chase he has been an active presence in both new york city and filipino non for profits for over twenty five years in two thousand  he pioneered the st ever brooklyn nets filipino headers night and has continued to organize the celebration for the past three years so mark anthony let's get right into it how did you get the brooklyn nets to agree to host a filipino heritage night working with companies like oracle j p morgan she's ok i've done a lot of not for profit is in the community with all the major sports teams and i've always kind of had their ear and they've always said you know i really want to do something because i think it was about ten years ago when i st on the show and we tried so many years and for some reason it didn't happen that three years later they said new director came in a close why don't we have any filipinos here and so basically they brought me on board and said this guy mark anthony he wants to do it and i  i remember growing up i have five brothers and the two all the ones when we go to the province or body or whatever we call in the philippines doing summer they would be members of a basketball team and they would play and compete and cheer them and then it is like a into the high schools basketball team but he placed a right but it's different it's not like the philippines like out there like they're cheering and then the whole community comes out like a family event that's something that i miss so is that what you guys forty teams participating how did you get you know dan connected to your cause so just doing a filipina heritage and it was not just about i mean yes i want to bring the heritage together but i saw a value to it for the leaks a report came out that organized sports is down in the united states as much as seventy percent in some areas and i'm thinking i love groups like folly i mean it does i mean  my own five year old daughter i figured out it does take a village to raise a kid and you have these groups like five leave me sigh colossi they're all they're all little villages that really raise our children it's a strong hold that we have in our community and i reach out to them and i said my goal was to do this event but i want to highlight them i mean they're doing the work i'm doing this one day event they're doing this three hundred and sixty five days seven days a week and they really don't get appreciated as much as they really should be so that's why i got really excited and that's why i kind of put them in the center of the court i realized the needed a different a differential advantage their league can say they and if you're willing to take a little risk on me this is what i want to do i want to highlight the kids i mean it still can hardly it's about making kids dream bigger because it's not just the kids playing basketball you could be and it's also the kids dancing showing traditional filipino dances part of that is that yes the national or national anthem is honest so it comes out when the schedule comes out we pick a date and try to work it out i've been kind of like honoring filipino heritage and i also want to give family friendly and effective cost effective and they went above and beyond to try to make it so that everyone can go unless they have a family you have a kid it's playing people right now so speaking on like ticket sales do you actually make money from your heritage nights you make money from building these basketball clinics how do you sustain it so that you're not burnt out salary i did not take a commission i had over twenty not for profits an organization there and they need to raise money for a basketball league need to make jerseys of the organization so what we kind of agreed on was to create a margin large enough for each group to make money so we had a brief i think maybe about i think it was thirty dollars and they would like to think they can make four or five dollars for each ticket so if you're bringing a one hundred people you're bringing five hundred dollars and then they sold amazing when we have an amazing community and we're all together and we're all having fun and it's wonderful having different groups that easily let's remind the present sandbox cheering for the same thing  i mean i know it just went like seeing a dad do what he does and and see me on the court with the kids while not a reaction well one is i hope he doesn't pass out while he's running past the court but another thing is that i just know that you know it's a community and people need that sense of support and community that they look forward to like he he spends more time talking about basketball and i was working with a few not for profits and they only focused in on thirteen year olds and the kind of stress that if you could keep a kid on the straight path at thirteen you know what they're going to finish high school they're going to finish college and that was kind of like a really sensitive area so that st year i said you know what i want all thirteen year olds on the court and let's let's make this a positive experience that these kids and the things that they would never had and then like so every time i've learned little detail from doing all these events i kind of made this one a venn compass everything all together help raise money hope try to do a differential advantage and because it creates pain for kids you know it really is a lot about the kids  i see how happy they are when they are on the court and just also spending time with their family and going to a basketball game where that they would not have gone before i really feel like that you've made that opportunity and also for me help having me be a part see one thing they did i didn't never told anybody i kind of kept a number of all the kids so then you start thinking wow ok how many people can you make a difference with and last year i had over a one thousand of my g know are doing the play but there are only one thing that you mention is all those other sports i just recently found out there are volleyball filipino volleyball but yes there's filipino badminton teams so they're also ping other sports and do you think that we should have like a badminton filipino sports heritage night you know i don't even know i've been approached by a few other teams and they're excited apparently when you do it once everyone wants to do it oh yes you know i know i'm the the leagues oh to the professional leagues they're like oh my they let a hawks reach out to me a lot all the local soccer teams here and i just hit them with  filipino bastable we know how very and they are very very good and like you know i would never even thought of this but the little love about sports with filipinos it's something like it's not you know where you're from who you are it's can you play can you can you help my team win and that camaraderie that you really get playing is the heart and obviously your dad pretty serious i like that there is like against us and it's also although i remember even going to like toronto yes like canada traveling all the way from long island all the way to canada my st time is watching basketball like that's what i remember and that's also remember where i was like oh there's there's filipino boys here but yeah it's just such an eye opening experience being able to see so many filipinos under one roof it's just an incredible experience yeah  and then what about you were saying different age groups and different types of groups is there a filipino basketball team the amount of education if you think about it that i mean i was kind of outside of the filipino community up until college following and going to process well now i'm kind of introducing phillip in a heritage to a much younger level imagine if i would have learned a lot more earlier this is you know when i st went up to nick ling i was like this is so cool yeah now mine was and i can call so now the kids get to see it and they're watching kids do it and they're getting excited and they want to find out more about it i mean think about it as i realize there's a journey for each person and if i could help someone or group learn about take on that journey well then isn't that the goal of bringing us all together  yeah i know i mean i really look up to you all the organizers for all these types of events whether be herded knights or basketball leagues most of it is all voluntary people who just do not get paid they just do it because for the love of the game so we are closing it up is there anything last thing that you want to say about family or about heritage nights like what do we look forward to in the next next five years  i mean currently right now i'm not a commission but i would love to see that this money somehow some way that can be earned brought to the filipino community here and back home the work that you do this i mean and now having a bigger company to follow i think that would be amazing you know that would be that would be really great to be able to bring it back to community community and so we're also really clicked anything about family again anthony to our viewers thank you for inviting us to your homes we hope that you enjoyed our show and learn the importance of bringing family together and the community through sports as always let us remember to be kind be true be fierce and do things that take all our hearts to the