The senior recreation center has the likes of Dr. Ed Manguiat and Fidel Sarmiento teaching classes.
There is no retirement from learning a craft and having new experience. This is what The Sunshine Place believes in.
A senior recreation center under the Felicidad Tan Sy Foundation, The Sunshine Place is located in a commercial building along Jupiter street in Bel-Air, Makati.
It is a venue for adults to live actively, through engaging in recreational classes and age-appropriate physical training programs. Here, they can be entertained, socialize and reflect; a place of happiness and wellness for one’s mind, body and soul.
These classes included everything from mindful movement and piano lessons to mahjong meets and memoir writing.
The building’s other tenants also add to the communal spirit of the center.
On the ground floor is the Bizu-run Happy Garden Café, which serves whole-food, healthy fare. The third floor has a foot reflexology clinic, while Vivian Yuchengco’s beauty lounge Vivify is on the fourth.
“I can say that Sunshine Place was a wonderful and successful idea of more and more people to find happiness later in life,” Tessie Sy-Coson tells The Philippine Star in a 2018 piece.
Online empowerment
Since the pandemic broke out, many businesses and initiatives have turned to digital solutions. The Sunshine Place has followed suit as it has offered their arts classes online.
Playcrafts PH’s Beth Robles, for example, teaches watercolor and calligraphy. She started scrapbooking and card making as a personal hobby and started a page to initially de-stash some items. Since then she has conducted water color, floral painting, and calligraphy workshops using different media such as watercolor, gouache, soft pastels, and acrylic at the Sunshine Place.
The center also offers acrylic painting in beginner and intermediate levels. Art Association of the Philippines President and acrylic instructor Fidel Sarmiento will mentor you all throughout the sessions with hands-on techniques, application of different brushes and basic strokes, and color rendering.
You’ll get to explore different styles in creating still life, landscapes, cityscapes, as well as underwater, animals and portrait paintings.
Dr. Edgardo “Ed” Manguiat, the conductor and founder of the UP Singing Ambassadors, is also conducting music and voice lessons for all ages at Sunshine Place online. Manguiat has led the UP Singing Ambassadors in garnering 8 Grand Prizes and 36 First Prizes in 20 international choral competitions.
For more information, call (0917) 515-5656 to enroll or email at [email protected], or visit Sunshineplaceph.com.
Banner: Dr. Edgardo “Ed” Manguiat
