{"id":298461,"date":"2019-04-29T06:06:22","date_gmt":"2019-04-28T20:06:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=298461"},"modified":"2019-04-29T06:06:22","modified_gmt":"2019-04-28T20:06:22","slug":"mcdonalds-donates-6k-to-libday-festivities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/mcdonalds-donates-6k-to-libday-festivities\/","title":{"rendered":"McDonald\u2019s donates $6K to LibDay festivities"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Liberation Day festivities committee members pose for a photo with McDonald\u2019s Garapan staff following a donation. (Kimberly A. Bautista)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

McDonald\u2019s CNMI and Guam donated $6,000 last week to the Liberation Day Festivities committee that has started its preparation process.<\/p>\n

According to Shayne Villanueva, Liberation Day Festivities committee vice chair, the committee has started their solicitations and McDonald\u2019s was their first donor. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe donation is going toward the Liberation Day festivities that will be happening from June 27 to July 6,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Villanueva added that, on behalf of the committee, he is thankful for McDonald\u2019s\u2019 continuous support. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe always appreciate their support to the local community. We appreciate their support for the Liberation Day festivities. Their help is huge. This event is a community event and we are trying to acquire support from everybody so that we can throw the best community event that we can,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

McDonald\u2019s CNMI general manager Joe Ayuyu Jr. credits their business success to the community and they are happy to give back. <\/p>\n

\u201cMy parents always remind me and my sisters that it\u2019s the community that makes us successful so we try as much as possible to give back to the community. Liberation is just one of the ways,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Villanueva said the committee has also opened up the application process for the Liberation Day Royal Court. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey can pick up the applications at the [Saipan] Mayor\u2019s Office. Right now, it\u2019s already open for application. So, any young woman over the age of 14 can apply,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

The community can expect changes in this year\u2019s 73rd Annual Liberation Day Festival. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll have a very organized parade. We\u2019ll have a good firework show. We\u2019re going to try and bring in some more games and some more family activities and entertainment. Hopefully, we can bring in a headliner of some sort. Hopefully, we can avoid bad weather because it\u2019s been quite often that we\u2019ve had that. We\u2019re looking at some other options to bring in some entertainment,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

The festival will also feature veterans who fought in the Battle of Saipan to commemorate the battle\u2019s 75th anniversary.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis year is large also because we\u2019re celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Saipan, which is June 15, and we will be helping out with that. We are working with Burke Waldron. He has started a gofundme [account] to come out here, and we will be celebrating his presence, along with the presence of some others that we are\u2026working on getting to fly over,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

McDonald\u2019s CNMI and Guam donated $6,000 last week to the Liberation Day Festivities committee that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":298462,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-298461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298461\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}