ANZA Manila is delighted to have officially launched our new charity for the year at our Wine and Cheese event at Flat Planet, our ANZA home.

Tiny Blessings is a charity that works with local partners in Manila to provide educational support, resources, and mentorship to street children, helping them to stay in school and achieve their full potential.

The charity was set up by Kyle Javier, originally from San Diego, following a holiday to the Philippines. After seeing the poverty and harsh living conditions the street children of Makati were facing, he created a foundation to fund the basic needs of some of the children he met. 

He has been running Tiny Blessings since 2018, and the foundation is funded by Kyle's family and friends in the US through individual sponsorship for the children and donations to help with bills such as rent and running costs.

Some of the projects ANZA hope to help Kyle with include setting up a more suitable home in Makati, investment in literacy programs for their tutoring service, supporting ongoing school costs for the students and establishing some regular sporting activities for their community. 

Kyle joined our ANZA Wine and Cheese event to talk about the charity, and explain that their mission is to bring 'tiny blessings' to the homeless children of Makati, aiming to instil love, light and confidence in them.

The charity currently provides a home for 14 street children who do not have parents able to care for them. In addition to this they provide food, transport to school, a safe place to visit and tutoring to 40 more children who live on the streets of Makati with their parents.

We look forward to updating you over the next year as to how the money raised will support the charity.

Our amazing High Tea in August raised a whopping 31,572 Php for The Sunshine Sewers.

HUGE thanks to our wonderful host, ANZA Co-President Daisy and all the amazing attendees for making the event such a success.

There was an amazing spread of sweet and savoury food, tea, coffee and mimosas. 

We also need to say a heartfelt thank you to our generous sponsors who donated the fantastic raffle prizes. @beautiquemd @bachacoffee @kulturafilipino @donrevyph @thedailyknead_ @risenationph your support helped us raise an amazing amount of money for The Sunshine Sewers.

Members of our Sunshine Sewers also bought some of their handmade items to the event to sell.

If you would like to put your needlework skills to good use, whether that's machine sewing, hand sewing, crochet or knitting, please email secretary@anzamanila.org and join the Sunshine Sewers.

ANZA Manila has moved to Flat Planet WorkSpace for it's virtual business address here in the Philippines.

A proudly Australian-owned Premium Hybrid Workspace, right in the heart of Makati Central Business District, Flat Planet is a premium Workforce Solutions Provider that has been part of the Philippines’ Makati Business Community for more than 13 years.

In 2023, they launched Flat Planet WorkSpace, offering premium amenities and an exquisitely designed fit-out to give the Community access to the future of office space.

Hello everyone, and what else can we say but a huge THANK YOU to all of you who supported the ANZA Grand Charity Ball 2023, sponsored by Atmosphere Resorts & Spa and Cebu Pacific at New World Makati on 11 March.

It was an amazing night, and thanks to your generosity and support we raised more than 1.5 MILLION pesos for our charity Childreamers Daycare in Tondo.

Thank you to all of our generous sponsors and donors and to all of you who bought raffle tickets, bid on the live and silent auctions, made pledges and made sure the night was one not to forget. We couldn't have done it without you! 

The evening would not have happened at all without our Ball Committee. SO much time and energy was volunteered to see the return of the ANZA Ball, and we think its fair to say that they made it the best ball ever for our members! 

It also seems a good time to say that everything you see ANZA do happens because of our amazing group of volunteers. We would like to say a special thank you though to the ANZA Executive Committee & Board, who have put blood, sweat & tears into making ANZA the amazing organisation it is over this past year. 

Sonia Clements, Kylie Bauquin, Lauren Venable, Cara O'Connell, Sarah Darby, Alice Cairn, Janet Utting, Josh Manoharan, Jodie Cairns, we are so grateful to work with such an outstanding group of humans. Thank you for all of your hard work and dedication. 

There will be more about the ball in our next newsletter.

If you have seen the work that our volunteers have been doing at Childreamers, we would welcome some more ANZA members to come and join us.

We aim to go weekly every Tuesday morning, and carpool, leaving Manila at 8am, returning around 11am/12noon.

It's a great morning, spending time with the children playing, reading stories and helping with the meals. 

If you're an ANZA member and want to come along, please contact Daisy at charities@anzamanila.org who will add you to the charities WhatsApp chat.

A huge thank you to Mr Fergus Murphy for hosting ANZA members and all our local and international friends at the Australian Ambassador's Residence in January.

It was a wonderful morning, which also included a visit from the New Zealand Ambassador, His Excellency Peter Kell. 

Hurrah, the ANZA Ball is back! My name is Ann Cuatico and I’m a designer and I’ve enjoyed making gowns, dresses, suits and tuxedos for the ANZA Ball for more than a decade, and am happy to introduce (and re-introduce) myself to ANZA’s new and existing members in this newsletter.

I’ve actually been designing and making clothes with my team since 1997. As a designer, I enjoy the gift of being able to make something specifically for someone, something unique that gives pleasure and confidence to the wearer which is stylish but comfortable too. I also enjoy collaborating, and inviting clients to try different looks from one’s usual, and, with separates especially, how to incorporate things with existing wardrobes. I’ve actually just finished putting together a wardrobe of clothes and accessories for a schoolmate who’s been getting some buzz as an Oscar leading actress contender since their film won the Palme D’Or at Cannes. It’s been really fun especially planning how my designed pieces can mix and match for different looks for the different events she’ll be attending in Toronto, New York and London.

I love what I do and am so fortunate that throughout the years, a lot of my clients and I actually develop long relationships that continue even when work takes them to another country. Throughout the years, clients have left, but I’ve been blessed that in some cases fate brings them back to Manila and they look me up to make clothes for them again. And, since I design for women, men and children (and the occasional pet and stuffed toy), I often get to make clothes for the rest of the family, and visiting relatives and friends too: I’ve actually made wedding gowns, ball and prom dresses, suits, etc for folks not based here all because it started with my making something special for someone or because a friend of someone kindly recommended me.

The ANZA Ball has always been one of my favourite events to design clothing for because the themes are always fun and interesting, the men and women who go are usually open to looking fab and dressed up for the event, and this ball has always been one of the most eagerly awaited ones every year in Manila. I’m as excited as many of you likely are, waiting to hear what this ball’s theme will be. And because I’ve always had a great relationship with ANZA, I’m happy to say I’ll be giving a 10% discount to ANZA members to have their outfits made by me for the ball.

I’m so looking forward to hopefully meeting a lot of you soon. My cell number is +63 917 848 0661 and I’m on WhatsApp, Viber and Telegram also. Here are a few photos I have of things I’ve made from some of the past ANZA Balls: