OFW's success articles

Model OFW families in Cordillera honored

BAGUIO CITY -- Two overseas Filipino workers (OFW) and their families have been named as 2018 Model
OFW Family of the Year Award (MOFYA) in the Cordillera region.

They were chosen not only for their financial success, but for their close family ties.

“It is quite easy to become a successful OFW in terms of maybe economic achievement, but we found
out it is difficult to maintain family relations and to soar it into success," Manuela Peña, Overseas
Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) – Cordillera chief, told the Philippine News Agency (PNA) on
Saturday.

Peña said awarded on Friday were Conrado Sevilleja and his family, who are natives of Barangay
Abaquid, Danglas, Abra, and Bernardo Salib-o and his family of Sta. Marcela town in Apayao, at Paragon
Hotel here.

The annual search of the OWWA aims to inspire overseas workers, who despite separation from their
families are able to maintain good relations and succeed economically.

The Sevilleja family won the MOFYA award for the land-based category.
Conrado, who has opted to return home in 2017, now manages an18-hectare eco-farm in Abra, which is
home to various high-value crops, such as dragon fruit, papaya, coconut, dalandan, passion fruit,
jackfruit, and various herbs and spices.

The property was acquired through his savings, starting when he was still single in the 1980s initially as
an electrician in Saudi Arabia before he moved to Australia and New Zealand to try his luck. From 2009
to 2017, he worked as a lineman.

He endured the sadness, the loneliness and the difficulty of being separated from his wife, Anita, and
their three children.

Conrado said they slowly developed the farm using hard-earned money. In partnership with the
Department of Agriculture (DA), the Sevillejas’ “farm-tourism” facility educates farmers on good
agricultural practices.

Anita told PNA that while her husband was abroad, he acquired skills on farm management.

“Even in our travels, he would never fail to include farm visitations in our itineraries," she said.

Their farm recently passed the accreditation for Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) by the Department of
Science and Technology (DOST). It was the first GAP Philippine-certified farm in Abra.

In their long years of loneliness, the couple drew more strength from their three girls, now all
professionals.

“Everything paid off. Now we are proud parents of three successful fine women. We have a licensed
electrical engineer who graduated cum laude and holds a position at Meralco. Our second child also
graduated cum laude and now works as Portfolio adviser to the Victorian Shadow Minister for Families
and Children, Housing and Prevention of Family Violence at the State Parliament of Victoria in Australia,
while our youngest is helping at the family-owned Sevilleja's Eco-Farm winery,” Conrado said.
The young Salib-o family, meanwhile, bagged the Sea-based category award.

Bernardo started out as a waiter at the Baguio Country Club (BCC) for two years before trying his luck as
a steward for the cruise line SuperFerry, putting into practice his undergraduate course of Bachelor of
Science in Marine Engineering.

In 2007, he joined an international cruise line where he was hired as a junior steward.

Arcellie, Bernardo’s wife, related that they were able to build their own house, set up a mini-grocery
store and buy an eight-hectare rice field in Apayao.

“My husband's work has relatively provided comfort to our family, for our two young children, the
elder is seven and the younger is five,” she said.

“He has been working in the cruise line for more than 10 years now. He has been very supportive of
any endeavor I would like to venture in,” Arcellie said.

She said because they support each other, they were able to succeed in both in business and in their
relationship.

“We always have long distance calls. We always decide together. It has always been a mutual decision
for anything that involves our family,” she said.

Apart from the awardees, there were five nominees for the 2018 MOFYA award.

They were Teresita Calado and family from Sablan, Benguet; Jerry Kadlosa and family from Bontoc,
Mountain Province; Glory Laus and family from Besao, Mountain Province; Marcelo Eroy and family
from Tuba, Benguet; and Evelyn Kimbungan and family from La Trinidad, Benguet.
The awardees will vie against the other regions’ best for the national MOFYA search.

https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1050176

After 14 Business Failures, Ex-OFW Now Makes Millions of Pesos by Reinventing the Simple Leche Flan
Princess San Diego developed as many as eight flavors of the popular Filipino dessert

Princess San Diego started 14 other

businesses before finally hitting it big with
her flavored leche flan concept What's Your
Flan?

In her best-selling book titled Grit, scientist Angela Buckworth argued that the main driver of success is not
entirely someone’s talent or skill, but a person’s perseverance. Princess San Diego may be one of the prime
examples of that statement.

Business Ideas

After 14 Business Failures, Ex-OFW Now Makes Millions of Pesos by Reinventing the Simple Leche Flan

Princess San Diego developed as many as eight flavors of the popular Filipino dessert

by Elyssa Christine Lopez | August 13, 2018

11.4K Shares

Princess San Diego started 14 other businesses before finally hitting it big with her flavored leche flan concept
What's Your Flan?
In her best-selling book titled Grit, scientist Angela Buckworth argued that the main driver of success is not
entirely someone’s talent or skill, but a person’s perseverance. Princess San Diego may be one of the prime
examples of that statement.

An Information Technology-degree holder, San Diego may not exactly be an academic achiever but she sure
knows a thing or two about trying harder. A former overseas Filipino worker in Dubai, she has put up a
barbecue stall, opened a restaurant and even sold gadgets online at one point. Still, no matter how hard she
tried, her businesses always faltered.

“I think I've tried all of the possible business ideas that time,” San Diego said in an e-mail interview. “By 2016,
I had tried at least 14 business ideas.”

Matcha Leche Flan

The profitable eureka moment came at the time she least expected it. A big fan of the Japanese green tea
matcha, San Diego tried to incorporate the hip and fun flavor into a Filipino favorite—leche flan—as part of
her personal experiment in her home kitchen. Unlike the usual Filipino recipe, which only had caramel syrup
on top of the custard, San Diego infused matcha-flavored chocolate to the Filipino dessert. Proud of her
creation, she posted a photo of it online that soon spread and became viral.
“I first started posting on my personal Facebook account about it just to brag about what I’ve made,” she
said. “But when I started receiving inquiries about it from my friends, I decided, well, this is going to be a
business.”

With Php1,000 worth of capital, San Diego created 25 tins of the Filipino custard and sold them for Php150
each to friends and family. In less than a week, she earned more than triple her initial capital. It also helped
that the timing of her posts came in the midst of the holiday season as most were looking for giveaways and
gifts to share for gatherings and parties.

San Diego also tapped the client base of her husband’s automotive shop. As part of the business’ Christmas
promo, she gave out her leche flans for free to every customer that came to the shop to gain feedback and
hopefully, some customers too. By the end of 2016, she was earning around Php20,000 weekly from her
home-based business.

What's Your Flan's bestselling

product is its matcha or green tea-
flavored leche flan
The food entrepreneur could have settled with that business model. After all, she was earning more than she
expected while staying at home. But San Diego, the girl who had always wanted to make a successful
business out of her home, wanted her product to reach more customers.

Bigger volume

“Four months into the business, I started tapping resellers since I realized doing a home-based business
would limit my customer base,” she said. “By having resellers, I could get huge volume of orders quickly.”

San Diego formalized the business and called it What’s Your Flan? The entrepreneur also got more aggressive
with her online marketing as she actively reached out for more resellers nationwide. After six months, she
had more than a dozen partners.

On average, a single reseller would order around 50 to 90 units of leche flan per week, giving her revenues of
around Php20,000 to Php40,000 a month. As of July 2018, What’s Your Flan? already has 40 partner resellers
located in different parts of Luzon, from Ilocos to Laguna. In Davao, the business has gained a franchisee that
has become the prime commissary for other resellers in Mindanao.

“Last year, I earned my first million from the business,” San Diego shared during her business pitch at the
Next Gen Franchising competition at this year’s Franchise Asia Conference. What’s Your Flan? ended as first
runner-up in the competition and won a booth at the three-day expo.
After the success of her leche flan business, San Diego says her next goal is to open her own coffee shop

Still, San Diego admitted that there would be months when orders would slow down. Instead of sulking about
the weak sales turnout, San Diego would take advantage of these months to experiment on new flavors that
she could introduce to resellers just in time for the peak season. As of June 2018, she already has eight
flavors of leche flan including tiramisu and coffee milk tea. She has also introduced an ice cream variant of
her custard.

When asked about what her next business could be, San Diego talked about opening a full-fledged café.

“Soon, I will open my own coffee shop and introduce pastries into the business,” she said.

https://www.entrepreneur.com.ph/business-ideas/after-14-business-failures-ex-ofw-now-makes-millions-of-
pesos-by-reinventing-the-simple-leche-flan-a00178-20180813

OFW'S DISCRIMINATION ARTICLES

OFWs remain vulnerable to discrimination, rights violation

With over 3,000 Filipinos forced to leave the country daily for overseas employment, no wonder the cases of
discrimination they experience could be as many. “Discrimination feeds mistrust, resentment, violence,
crime and insecurity and makes no economic sense, since it reduces productivity," said United Nations High
Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay in her message on the occasion of International Human Rights
Day last Thursday December 10. Her renewed calls, thus, for individuals, groups, and governments to work
towards ending discrimination against migrants and refugees were welcomed by two major migrant
organizations in the country. “Mass migration remains a grave concern, especially for women domestic
helpers, because there exists no internationally accepted standards for protecting migrant workers," said
Ellene Sana, executive director of the Center for Migrant Advocacy (CMA). Another migrant rights group,
Migrante International, also said the government’s labor export policy resulted in overseas Filipino workers
(OFW) being “sacrificial lambs" to ensure an open labor market and the continued flow of remittances,
leaving migrant workers vulnerable to discrimination and human rights violations. Increasing OFW
deployment Based on recent data from the Philippine Overseas Employment Agency, deployment of OFWs in
2008 increased by 14% from the previous year to 1.2 million, over 50% of whom are sent to the Middle East
and with an over-all annual remittance amounting to roughly $17 billion. About 9 to 10 million Filipinos, or
approximately 10% of the total population, are currently living in 193 countries and territories, according to
the CMA. The staggering figures also translate to a slew of human rights violations. As of 2007, Migrante has
been handling over 1,000 cases of abuses against OFWs, including cases of repatriation, illegal recruitment
and trafficking. For the same period, at least 4,775 Filipinos including 673 women and 50 minors were
recorded imprisoned and 35 on death row. The figures do not yet include the recent spate of hijacking of
ships, including 68 Filipinos currently being held by pirates in Somalia and Nigeria. Sana, however, believes
that OFWs are in better conditions today since 2007 when the government started implementing policy
reforms for OFWs, such as removal of placement fees, improved certification processes for workers, and
more tedious accreditation and verification of agencies and employers. Women are most vulnerable

Still, discriminatory practices exist, more so in areas of high levels of OFW concentration and women workers,
according to Sana. In Hong Kong for example where over 70,000 workers were deployed last year, all migrant
workers except helpers can achieve residency status after seven years of living in this Chinese territory.
Terminated helpers are also given only two weeks to look for a new employer or leave the territory. In the
Gulf regions where over 300,000 OFWs were deployed in 2008, women workers reportedly do not have rest
days, no visitation privileges, their movement is restricted and passports are confiscated. In some European
countries like Holland, Filipino women with foreigner husbands are required to live with their spouses for at
least three years before they become can citizens, some of them ending up as victims of domestic violence.
Creation of jobs, not labor export “Migration cannot be a development strategy," Sana said as she criticized
the government’s failure to create domestic jobs. Migrante also said, “A policy of labor export inherently
limits, if not directly contradicts, the state’s ability to protect migrants’ rights and welfare." While
recognizing the government’s attempts at improving the plight of Filipino migrant workers, Sana believes
that the all these will be futile given the limited presence of labor offices across the world and problems in
implementation due to lack of resources. In the meantime, both CMA and Migrante vow to continue
pressuring the government to put a stop to its policy of labor export, as well as ceaselessly work towards
improving the conditions of more than a million Filipino workers all the world over.

https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/news/content/179168/ofws-remain-vulnerable-to-discrimination-
rights-violation/story/

OFW'S TRAUMATIC STORIES

Runaway OFW urges gov't to stop human trafficking

MANILA -- Traumatized by what she described as "inhumane treatment and slavery" in the hands of her
employers, Joan Masa, a housemaid in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE) said she had learned her
lessons and is not thinking of going back as an overseas Filipino worker (OFW) yet.
Interviewed by the media on Wednesday (Nov. 1), Masa, who is one of the 105 distressed Filipinos
repatriated from UAE, said she is relieved to be home after her nine-month stay in the Gulf state.

"Overworked po talaga, wala kaming rest day and unpaid ang salary, so naisipan naming mag-runaway and
then dumiretso po kami sa Philippine Embassy," she narrated.

"Doon sa embassy, 'di po kami pinabayaan doon, inasikaso po kami at lahat po ng needs namin ipinagkaloob
po nila sa amin at ito po nakauwi kami ng buong-buo," she added.

Masa, who stayed with her employer for six months and three months under the embassy's care, shared that
cases of human trafficking of Filipinos are prevalent.

"Marami tayong kababayan sa embahada na kailangan ng tulong(We have a lot of countrymen at the
embassy who need help)," she said, sharing there are still numbers of Filipinos who can't go home.

"Kailangang masugpo (ang illegal traffickers) para hindi na maulit yung dinanas namin, para wala nang
kababayan natin na makakaranas nung sakit at sakripisyo na dinanas namin dun (Illegal traffickers should be
stopped so that no one will ever get to experience the pain and suffering we went through again)," she
added.

Compared to her overseas work in Hong Kong, Joan said her employment in Abu Dhabi was the "worst".

"Halos ang tulog namin two hours lang, gigising po kami ng 8 ng umaga tapos ang tulog na namin 5 o 6 (ng
umaga) (We only get to sleep for two hours only, we usually go to sleep 5 or 6 in the morning then we have
to wake up at 8 a.m.)," Masa recounted.

She said the daily grind was almost the same when it is Ramadan season wherein households are busiest.
"Wala po yung pahinga, kahit po pag-ihi bawal po tapos po yung pagkain namin limited kung ano yung matira
'yun lang (There's actually no time to rest, you can't even use the restroom and our food is limited to
leftovers only)."
Asked if she would consider working abroad again, Masa answered not for now.

"Hindi na. Sa ngayon, hindi na po muna, talagang medyo traumatic po 'yung nangyari sa amin doon, para sa
akin hindi po makatao, slavery po talaga (Not for now. Our experience was really traumatic, it's inhumane.)"

Joan, like the other 104 Filipinos who went home on Wednesday, received a certificate from the goverment
to be presented at any Overseas Workers Welfare Adminstration (OWWA) offices to claim livelihood financial
assistance worth around PHP15,000.

According to OWWA chief Hans Leo Cacdac, the government will strengthen efforts against illegal recruiters
who typically attract innocent victims through social media.

https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1014565