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Bayanihan (pronounced [bajɐˈnɪhan]) is a Filipino term taken from the word bayan, referring to a nation, town or community. The whole term bayanihan refers to a spirit of communal unity or effort to achieve a particular objective.

Etymology

The origin of the term bayanihan can be traced from a common tradition in Philippine towns where community members volunteer to help a family move to a new place. The process involves literally carrying the house to its new location. This is done by putting bamboo poles forming a strong frame to lift the stilts from the ground and carrying the whole house with the men positioned at the ends of each pole. A mural by Filipino National Artist Carlos "Botong" Francisco illustrates the process. The tradition also features a small fiesta hosted by the family to express gratitude to the volunteers.

Usage

In society, bayanihan has also been adopted as a term to refer to a local civil effort to resolve national issues.

In teamwork, one of the first groups to use the term is a world acclaimed dance group (Bayanihan Dance Company) which travels different countries to perform the various traditional folk dances of the country with the objective of promoting Philippine culture.

In computing, the term bayanihan has evolved into many different meanings and incorporated as codenames to projects which depict the spirit of cooperative effort involving a community of members. An example of these projects is the Bayanihan Linux project which is a Filipino based desktop focused Linux distribution.

In ethnic newspapers, Bayanihan News is the name of community newspaper for the Philippine community in Australia. It is a bilingual newspaper in English and in Filipino with regular news and articles on Philippine current events and history. It was established in October 1998 in Sydney, Australia.

Bayanihan is taken from the root word bayani meaning "hero". Thus, bayanihan means being a hero to one another. As in the classic tradition of carrying a house, each man carries a portion of the weight of the house and in effect, becomes a hero for all the others because he lightens the load for the others. Each man thus becomes a Hero to everyone as all the others become a Hero to him.

See also

• Bayanihan Philippine National Folk Dance Company
• Mutual aid
• Gotong royong

External links

• Bayanihan Dance Company -- Britannica Student Encyclopedia
• Project Bayanihan is a project started at MIT Laboratory for Computer Science in 1996 to "explore and develop the idea of volunteer computing, which enables people to join a large parallel computation by simply visiting a Web site with an appropriate browser".