FYLPRO’s Tayo Project Selected as Honorable Mention in NIH Build UP Trust Challenge

For Immediate Release

Media Contact: communications@fylpro.org

June 14, 2024

FYLPRO’s Tayo Project Selected as Honorable Mention in NIH Build UP Trust Challenge

The Filipino Young Leaders Program (FYLPRO), through its Tayo project, has been selected by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as an honorable mention in the Build UP Trust Challenge. This prize competition seeks to identify solutions that increase research participation and adoption of medical care by building trust and improving engagement with historically underserved communities. FYLPRO’s Tayo project is one of 10 honorable mentions and is the only Filipino organization.

By advancing to the second phase of the challenge, Tayo will receive an opportunity to strengthen, implement, and test its proposed solution. Developed by FYLPRO’s COVID-19 Task Force as a rapid response to the ongoing pandemic and to address the specific needs of the Filipino diaspora in the United States, Tayo originally launched in fall 2020 with a virtual help desk connecting Filipinos to vital information and services in the greater Los Angeles area. Today, Tayo has evolved into an innovative data hub that empowers Filipinx/a/o communities by collecting data, fostering partnerships, publishing culturally relevant insights, and developing leaders to create an equitable and sustainable future.

Tayo’s online bilingual platform supports crisis response and recovery efforts in the diaspora and informs longer-term Filipino community resilience strategies based on indigenous kwentuhan oral storytelling traditions. Tayo plans to expand on existing and proven approaches to further develop a culturally-tailored suite of web-based services that improve community access to reliable, relevant, and timely public health information. 

The founders of Tayo envision the project to also serve as a template that potentially could be replicated and customized for other systematically excluded immigrant populations with growing language-barrier and health information access disparities.

“We look forward to continuing to serve our community by meeting them where they are at,” said Tayo Co-Founder and Project Director and FYLPRO immediate Past President Leezel Tanglao. “By centering our community’s needs first, we are able to help empower them to make the most informed decisions.”

For Phase II of the Build UP Trust Challenge, NIH will select up to four winners that will each receive up to $200,000 in prize money.

For more information on the Build UP Trust Challenge, visit: https://www.builduptrust.org/results/finalists

About the Filipino Young Leaders Program (FYLPRO)

The Filipino Young Leaders Program (FYLPRO) is a network of high performing, next-generation leaders who advance the Philippines and the Filipino people through their advocacy and expertise in various industries.

We continually expand the pipeline of Filipino young leaders in the diaspora.  By connecting them to the motherland, we foster collaborative multinational  relationships that create innovations and support the socio-economic  progress of the global Filipino community.

For more information, visit fylpro.org.

About Tayo

Tayo, a project of the Filipino Young Leaders Program (FYLPRO), is an innovative data hub that empowers Filipinx/a/o communities by collecting data, fostering partnerships, publishing culturally relevant insights, and developing leaders to create an equitable and sustainable future.

For more information, visit tayohelp.com.

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