Mariana Islands on display at Chamorro Festival

8th Annual Chamorro Cultural Festival dancers. (Contributed Photo)

SAN DIEGO, California—The San Diego-based non-profit group CHE’LU, or Chamorro Hands in Education Links Unity, will be celebrating its 8th Annual Chamorro Cultural Festival on March 25, 2017, at the California State University-San Marcos.

The festival is a free event with free parking.

The annual Chamorro cultural festival is a highly anticipated family-fun event, celebrating the arts, culture, customs and people of the Mariana Islands, which include Guam, Saipan, Rota, Tinian, and islands in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.

CCF is a unique day of celebration for Chamorros, uniting the indigenous people of the Marianas from around the world with music and cultural dance performances, educational workshops, cultural foods and a diverse array of products to accentuate the Chamorro in everyone.

This year’s theme is “Ta Na’ La’la’ Gi Halom i Famagu’onta…i Lengguahita yan Kutturata” which translates to “Let it Live from Within Our Children…Our Language and Our Culture.”

“The Chamorro Cultural Festival helps many of us Chamorros celebrate our unique culture and heritage with a vast array of workshops, arts and crafts and entertainment,” said Danny Blas, chairman of the CHE’LU board of directors. “Every year this event grows and grows. The CCF has become the premier Chamorro event in the mainland away from the Marianas, and our team is very proud to be able to continue the work to preserve our culture, language and the Chamorro ways of life.”

The CSU-San Marcos festival site allows CHE’LU to continually improve the festival-goer experience by providing a spacious ground, protected parking, more seating areas and enhanced facilities, including free Wi-Fi and family-friendly restrooms.

CHE’LU is a nonprofit organization, created and sustained by volunteers in San Diego. It was established in 2005 to highlight the unique Chamorro culture and its indigenous people. Its mission statement says: “CHE’LU is dedicated to the Chamorro community by strengthening our native language, culture and health through education.”

Some of the ways CHE’LU preserves the culture are through the programs we support. In particular we reach out to the greater community through our Sakman Chamorro project, an outrigger canoe project that returned pride to our community by reigniting our ancient seafaring traditions and our youth cultural music and dance programs.

Our entire board hopes you are able to celebrate with us in San Marcos on March 25, 2017. (PR)