OFW dreams can come true

Shayne went to Singapore as a student trainee when she was 19. As with most students training abroad, she fell in love with the place and eventually found regular employment. Training institutions like hotels and restaurants are impressed with their performance and apply for legal work permits for them. And so, her journey into overseas employment began. She would then meet her future husband, who also does well being a barista in one of the bigger cafés in the island state.

When they decided to marry and have a child, they knew it would soon be time to come home. But not without planning the future. Jay, her husband, influenced her to plant cacao trees in her ancestral land in Aklan. On a small patch of land, she took up his suggestion and started a humble cacao farm six years ago. He, in the meantime, started to roast coffees as he learned the craft while working in Singapore.

Today, the couple have a start-up chocolate bar business along with hot chocolate mixes, all handmade and made with love as artisans. I feel Shayne’s passion as she explains how the cacao bean transforms into a warm chocolate drink, cooked batirol style. She also lets me sample her dark chocolate made with kaong sugar, believed to have lower glycemic index and perfect for diabetics who have a craving for chocolate.

I sense the long exposure of Shayne in the cosmopolitan city as she describes different recipes of her chocolates for different markets. And this is an inspiration to our 10 million OFWs abroad. Absorb what you see and taste, and apply the learnings to your dream business. This is exactly how Shayne and Jay are running their thriving enterprise – with inspiration from their long stay abroad and getting exposed to different markets.

I mentioned another café to Shayne where the founders are also ex-OFWs and they apparently worked in the same places in Singapore. But upon coming home, they established cafés and practiced what they have learned abroad. The ex-OFWs are now partners with investors who help them realize their dream.

In the case of Shayne and Jay, they put together their savings to slowly acquire equipment, whether it’s for coffee or the chocolate part of the business. They also planned well, by simply planting cacao trees on their own ancestral land, making the “bean to bar” experience more authentic and personal. Who thinks ahead by planting trees? Not very many people do.

This is the advantage of our youth today. They can train abroad to absorb what the wide world has to offer, but come home to establish a business they love, stay close to family and start their own families alongside a small business. Now imagine these OFWs coming home to start enterprises that can hire more people and move the economy in passion projects that soon pay off.

I remember an ex-OFW, Imelda Dagus, who dreamt of opening a branch of her family’s Jolo (Sulu) coffee shop in Zamboanga City, making Tausug delicacies and Sulu coffee or Kahawa Sug accessible to those who cannot visit Jolo. That was 10 years ago. Today Imelda’s Dennis Coffee Garden has five branches grown organically, and is looking to ensure her coffee supply by planting coffee in her native Sulu, of course. With Imelda, she opened the café first and is now planting coffee on ancestral lands, completing the circle, albeit in another manner. While Shayne planted cacao before the chocolate business started, Imelda is moving the value chain backwards, 10 years after the café was established.

Both are good developments and serve as living inspirations to other OFWs who, instead of just sending money over, save the funds for planting seeds for the future. These two women are examples of sustainability in the real sense of the word. One plants cacao, the other plants coffee. They will never run out of raw materials for their business, having acted on all parts of what they call the “value chain” – from seed to cup in the case of coffee, from bean to bar in the case of chocolate. While it goes against some schools of thought in business as many mentors want to focus on just one part of the chain, these two women want to have control of their sources and are using the formula of vertical integration or backward integration.

I cannot help but write about these success stories because they show the side of the Filipino which is absorbent, malleable and creative. We assimilate cultures but eventually go back to our roots and apply whatever we learn from travels and what we learn from other cultures. The formula is simple: inspiration plus passion drives one to think outside the box and start something from nothing. It is not the copycat style of just checking what is trending and going for it.

These two women are symbols of everything a Filipina aspires to be – a good mother, partner, spouse who starts a sustainable business doing what she loves. It is hard to pretend to just like a business; in these two case, you can feel their passion and their desire to make things better. Their spouses are important parts of the puzzle because partner support is key in growing such enterprises. And with both women, their partners are very supportive.

I hope that other OFWs now abroad will find their own niche or passion and come home soon to be with their families, carrying with them the learnings from working in other countries. It is like getting free training or getting a masterclass while getting paid during your employment overseas. Instead of taking the rest of the family to settle abroad, come home and plant a tree. It may be the start of a new business that can keep you close to family while having a successful business. Their dreams came true. You can start dreaming yours now.