In 2016, over adobo and sinigang, a group of young Filipinx-Canadian professionals came together to leverage their networks and make it a mission to inspire the next generation of Filipinx-Canadian youth to reconstruct a more positive image that reshapes, reimagines and what it means to be Filipinx in Canada.

In 2014, the Institute for Research on Public Policy published a peer-reviewed research study titled Understanding Intergenerational Social Mobility by Dr. Philip Kelly, an associate professor at York University. Dr. Kelly’s paper observed the common upward trends in social mobility found among Canadian immigrants and sought to understand why children, especially males of immigrant parents from the Philippines presented a double anomaly: they were less likely to hold a degree than either their parents or their peers in other racialized groups. Through interviews and statistical analysis, Dr. Kelly identified three patterns among Filipino Canadian youth that have led to the intergenerational reproduction of social marginality within Canada -- lack of parental oversight/ assistance for children, lack of social networks to shape educational choices and employment trajectories, and lastly, social constructs of Filipino-ness that shape aspirations of Filipino Canadian youth. With this in mind Dr. Kelly’s paper points out that just because Filipino’s are underrepresented does not necessarily mean that we are entirely absent from the highest of ranks in numerous professions and leadership roles. Equally, it is important not to devalue the important work Filipino’s play in nursing, personal support workers, and caregiving. Although Dr. Kelly’s article uses post-secondary graduation as a metric of success (given that it tends to correlate with higher incomes and professional employment), Dr. Kelly emphasizes that there are clearly other pathways to and definitions of, success.

The word RISE was chosen to reflect the upward momentum that the group wanted to create and Tribe to reflect the importance of community being at the centre of the initiative -- a community rising together.