In a primary interview last November 2023 with Mrs. Naty Ocampo-Castro and this project’s proponents themselves, Hermosa and Pelayo, 2023; she decided to continue her mother’s legacy of pabalat wrappers after retiring as an industrial engineer in 2010. Nanay Naty herself considered pabalat as a vanishing or dying craft in today’s generation as she stated that practicing the craft itself and the cutting aspect needs a lot of patience. If the people are not passionate about keeping the culture alive or not into arts and crafts, they will not take interest in creating pabalat.

From Chin & Gan in a 2022 LaSallian article, another pabalat artisan and part of the organizing committee of Nanay Naty’s workshop, Ruth Giron, stated, “It’s a dying craft na dapat nang i-save”. Another perspective from UST College of Fine Arts and Design Professor Anna Marie Bautista, who discovered the craft through her college curriculum on traditional Filipino art forms, “It’s dying because nobody does things manually anymore,” as pabalat craft requires a time-consuming process of practicing and creating.

From the last statements of Ruth Giron, “Ang legacy ay, sa tingin ko, pamana-salin sa susunod na henerasyon.” as she believes that this craft should be recognized by other people and artisans outside Bulacan. 

However, Nanay Naty Ocampo-Castro remains positive in maintaining the legacy of the pabalat heritage through promoting the craft in workshops and lectures and with her delicacies brand, Ocampo’s Specialty Products. In advertising, this Filipino delicacy is enwrapped with a generation’s worth of heritage craft and considered Bulacan’s labor of love (Alejandrino, 2021).

Maintaining the Pabalat craft as an active heritage craft is considered as a cultural responsibility since it is a symbolism of not only the Bulacan’s cultural identity but to introduce it as one of the Philippine heritage crafts, an artistry that needs to be recognized by a wider range of audience or market.