The best Christmas gift to an OFW

If the Infant Jesus were a Filipino migrant worker, who was born in the manger somewhere in Saudi Arabia, Dubai or Kuwait, and the Three Kings were the triumvirate of the Ambassador and other Embassy officials, representing the government, the Church represented by our missionaries and the NGOs that go out of their ways to promote the best interests and welfare of the OFWs, there should be a Fourth Magi. He is the Labor Attache, assisted by the Welfare Officer, representing the DOLE, OWWA and POEA.

The Ambassador’s gift is a package of bilateral labor agreements protecting the basic rights of our migrant workers. The Church’s gift is a series of continuing spiritual and emotional interventions for the Filipinos abroad. The NGOs bring foods, clothing and other assistance to distressed workers. But after all the gifts are spent and consumed, there is still something important that is missing. The OFWs need more, deserve more.What should the Fourth Magi bring?

To our mind, the best gift that can be offered to the OFWs is not money, nor packages of goods, not even a set of laws constituting safety nets for migrant workers. They are a series of empowerment learning sessions on FINANCIAL LITERACY and FAMILY VALUES AND EMPOWERMENT. The basic premises and rationale are very fundamental. These are very essential learnings that our migrant workers need. Labor attaches who do this well and sincerely deserve the accolades of our grateful people.

Why should these be done? There are two tragedies that can befall an OFW after spending the best of his life and career abroad: First, he goes home to find his family already shattered, his marriage irreparably broken, and his children in moral disarray and emotional devastation. Second, he finds out that all the money he sent from abroad to his family was spent in thoughtless extravagance, pointless consumer spending, and he has no savings, much less investments. He is an old and sickly man, without money and without family.

To save the OFWs from such double whammy, I dedicated my last six years of deployment abroad as labor diplomat in Malaysia, Kuwait and Central Taiwan to address those two issues. In Malaysia, in collaboration with the Ambassador, the Church leaders and the Filipino Community organizations, we put up a Sunday school for migrant workers, where we trained more than 500 OFWs in computer literacy, basic nursing, physical therapy, culinary, cuisine and bartending arts, tailoring and sewing, arts and crafts. 

We also taught communication skills, social graces, languages (English, Pilipino, Bahasa Malaysia and others), self-defense and ballroom dancing. I taught Basic Laws For Filipinos and other subjects. More than 50 Filipino expatriates taught for free. We had Filipinos helping other Filipinos, from engineers to domestic helpers. Tremendous results were generated from this 3-year school. Now we have DHs working in hotels, restaurants and in the Royal Houses of Sultans in Malaysia, Middle East and UK.

In Kuwait, I focused on saving the Filipino families by putting up three centers: First the GUIDANCE AND COUNSELLING CENTER, where my wife served as volunteer head counselor assisted by Filipino spouses of diplomats, businessmen and executives. The center helped domestics who were raped, physically battered, emotionally maltreated and spiritually broken by a confluence of problems in their families at home and their job-related traumas. 

The second was the PARA-LEGAL CENTER, where I trained a group of Filipino community leaders on how to assist OFWs with legal problems concerning immigration, labor problems and family issues. The third was a SPIRITUAL CENTER, in collaboration with Church-based organizations and the Catholic and Protestant as well as the Iglesia Ni Kristo,and Charismatics. We assisted OFWs in spiritual crisis. We have seen the wonders of the impact of such initiatives and we can write volumes of true stories of reconciliations and reunions.

To my mind, however, it was in Central Taiwan that I gave the best gift. I helped more than 500 OFWs recover the illegally collected brokers’ fees ranging from P100,000 to P200,000 from each worker. Then I conducted a series of seminars on entrepreneurship like goat-raising, sari-sari stores, internet cafès, barber, tailoring, dress and laundry shops. 

Last week, I got news that one of my proteges has a successful goat business in Isabela, another a prosperous internet cafè in Davao, a laundry shop in Pampanga, a barbershop in Cagayan de Oro, and a meat distribution enterprise in Baguio. I am very happy and I thank the Lord that He blessed the seeds that I planted in the hearts of the OFWs. The best news is that they have decided to stay here and not work as OFWs anymore. God is good, the Filipinos are good. There is hope for the New Year indeed.