Story 2: Erlinda F. Chi
The past few months have brought a series of calamities to the Philippines. Before 2019 was over, four major earthquakes rocked Mindanao and Typhoon Ursula battered the Visayas. Hopes that 2020 would start on a more positive note have been dashed by the Taal Volcano eruption and the outbreak of COVID-19. The latter has brought much of the world to a stand-still, endangering lives and livelihoods.
As of this writing, we have already heard stories of migrant workers in Hong Kong being let go as expat employers return to their home countries. Travel disruptions also inflict financial hard-ship on migrants workers that are unable to return to their job sites and have to remain in the Philippines indefinitely.
Return and reintegration are considered as the last stages of migration cycle, but how prepared are Filipino migrant workers for this? In times of grim headlines, we will focus on sharing the success stories our Ateneo Leadership and Social Entrepreneurship (ALSE) graduates who have returned home for good, started their business and are still running them today.
Erlinda F. Chi, ALSE 12
Flowerqueen Blooms
Married female migrant workers seek employment abroad
to support their nuclear family while young single women, depending on her role
in the family, support their parents and siblings. More often than not,
extended families also benefit from migrants’
remittances. Some
leave because they seek self-fulfillment, adventure, and want to discover the
world outside their present environment. Others work abroad because they want
to escape from domestic violence.
Erlinda F. Chi belongs to those women who sought new
adventures. It was not poverty that primarily drove her to go abroad. She had a
good education. She finished her Bachelor of Science in Secretarial
Administration at Saint Mary's University and some MBA units at St. Paul
University in Tuguegarao, Cagayan. After graduation, she found a teaching job
at the University of St. Louis in the same city.
A new adventure
After 10 years of teaching, Erlin was raring to
explore something new and discover what life could offer her outside the
Philippines. The only way for her to do this was to become an overseas Filipino
worker. At the age of 34, she left her home in Saguday, a fifth-class
municipality of Quirino Province in August 1991 bound for Hong Kong.
At one point in time, there were six people in Erlin’s family who worked abroad: five in Hong Kong and one
in Canada. Today, all four who worked in Hong Kong, including Erlin, have
already come home. This is not surprising since Cagayan Valley, where Quirino
Province, is one of the top OFW-sending
regions in the country. In Hong Kong, one will find many OFWs mostly coming
from the same region or hometowns, especially from northern Philippines.
Switching jobs from a schoolteacher to a foreign
household worker was not an easy decision for Erlin. Her first two years in
Hong Kong were miserable and depressing. She was crying every day and
experienced difficulties in adjusting to her new situation. There were times
that she was inconsolable and refused to go back to her employer after her day
off. She thought about what kind of life she landed. She had two maids at home,
but in Hong Kong she was the maid.
All things considered, life got better for Erlin after
two years working in Hong Kong and she felt finally adjusted to her new
situation. Fortunately, her employers were generous, kind, respectful, and
understanding. But she still
felt it was not an easy job to work as a domestic helper. Little by little she
overcame loneliness, met new friends and decided to stay in Hong Kong until
1994. Many domestic helpers developed special attachment to their employer.
Loyalty and the perception that their employers need them specially those who
treat them well motivate them to stay.
Erlin’s husband died in 2004 while she was working in Hong
Kong leaving her with their lone daughter. Now a widow, Erlin decided to move
on with her life in Hong Kong, serving the same employer who had gotten sick.
This became another reason for extending her stay. According to the contract
agreement in Hong Kong for domestic helpers, Erlin had to go home every two
years to renew her contract, which she did a couple of times for a total of 21
years. Based on a study undertaken in 2012 on the Behaviors and Practices of Filipino
Domestic Workers in Hong Kong (Rispens-Noel), the average length of stay for
migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong is seven years and three months.
Fossilized flowers
During the period 1994-1997, Erlin decided to stay
longer in the Philippines. It was during this extended stay in Saguday that she
noticed her mother was laboriously drying and dyeing leaves, grasses, and twigs
gathered from the rice fields and hills and made them into flowers. She learned
that the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) conducted a training in
fossilized flower making in 1994, which her mother attended. Her mother immediately practiced what she learned and was
eventually recognized as one of the pioneer fossilized flower makers in
Quirino.
Seeing the business potential of fossilized flower
making, Erlin registered Patrocinio's Arts Gifts and Decors in 1997. The
business was named after her late eldest brother, with Erlin as the registered
owner,
and run and managed by her sister, Agnes.
In the same year after she officially registered her
business, she decided to go back to Hong Kong. By this time, she was already
feeling adjusted to her new life as a domestic helper. She got involved in various activities of the
Filipino community in Hong Kong. She spent most of her free days attending
leaders’ forums
conducted by the Philippine Consulate. She also organized the Hong Kong
International Association of Computer Enthusiasts and taught computer classes
to Filipino domestic helpers at Far East Computer Center, C and D Computer
Center, and Welkins Computer Center on a voluntary basis. During that period,
she tried to monitor the progress of her business, but she could only do very
little. She was highly dependent on the information she received from home.
Then in 2012, Erlin attended the first ever Ateneo
Leadership and Social Entrepreneurship (LSE) course conducted in Hong Kong.
While attending the course, Erlin had ample time to rethink her business back
home and realized some weaknesses. She decided to submit Flowerqueen Enterprises as her
business plan. She proposed new directions for her business and for the first
time, she finally felt she had a full grasp of how to run it and what it should
be. The lessons and tools she learned from LSE made her more systematic,
analytical and more self-confident. The first thing she did after LSE was to
change the name of her business to Flowerqueen Enterprises and designate her
daughter Maria Lynx Brenda Chi as owner. This was the start of Erlin’s life as a social entrepreneur, juggling between her
work and managing her business from a distance. Flowerqueen Enterprises is one
of the business plans presented in LSE 2012 that was actually implemented.
She also learned how to manage her personal finance.
She stopped sending money to her mother, nieces, nephews, and siblings, unless
urgent and necessary. Except for her mother, she encouraged her relatives to
make flowers and promised to buy them. In this way, they earn something through
their own efforts instead of just waiting for the money she sent. She finally
had a chance to start saving money for her business.
Flowerqueen Enerprises
Flowerqueen Enterprises is a handicraft business
venture that manufactures fossilized flowers, decorative products, and
artworks. They use indigenous materials like weeds, leaves, twigs, seeds,
grasses, driftwood and other useful waste materials. After a laborious
processes of drying, bleaching and dyeing, flower assemblers create colorful
flowers and bouquets. The flowers are used during weddings, graduation, debut,
anniversaries, graduation, Teachers’ Day, Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, Christmas, and other occasions.
From the first training conducted in 1994, the
fossilized flower making in Quirino developed into a thriving business destined
for local and international markets. The business created employment for
unemployed couples, low-income individuals, out of school youths, and those who
have physical barriers to employment, such as inmates. The Department of Social Work and Development of Quirino also contracted Flowerqueen in
2016 to train women under the conditional cash transfer (CCT) program locally
known as Pantawid Pamilya Pilipino Program or 4Ps — a government program that
provides conditional cash grants to the poorest of the poor in the Philippines.
Around 42 participants attended the training.
At present, Flowerqueen has two full-time and three
part-time workers who can produce 1,000 – 2,000 flowers a day. The production increases during
peak season. They buy materials locally such as twigs, leaves and grasses that
are abundant in the area, which also provide extra income to elderly people and
small farmers. Housewives also supply finished products to Flowerqueen an earn extra income for
their family’s basic needs. Aside from the local market, Erlin also sells
fossilized flowers in
Manila, La Union, Nueva Ecija, Baguio, Bulacan, Davao, South Cotabato, and Hong
Kong.
Continuous training
To stay in the business, Flowerqueen conducts regular
training for processors of raw materials and assemblers of flowers. It strives
to ensure unique and high-quality output. It also offer specialized floral
arrangements and church decorations, including local door-to- door deliveries.
When online selling was not yet quite popular, the business joined trade fairs
in Megamall, World Trade Center in Manila, and Golden Shell Pavilion
facilitated by DTI. Owing to its significant contribution to the local economy,
the province of Quirino declared fossilized flower making as its
“One Town, One Product –
OTOP” — a government program
through the DTI to encourage entrepreneurship aimed at
providing livelihood and employment. The OTOP designation boosted the marketing
of fossilised flower products. Flowerqueen is one of the major and pioneer
suppliers in Quirino.
Among the challenges Erlin while running the business
are shortage of skilled assemblers and lack of drying machines to dry raw
materials, especially
during rainy season. She needed funds so she can buy the necessary equipment
and automate some processes like cutting and drying. She plans to tap the
Department of Science and Technology to advise her on the appropriate equipment
she needs. However, this plan is something for the future when she can already
save enough money. Her concern now is to finish the construction of a
multipurpose center that will house her business.
LSE helped her understand how to effectively manage
the day-to-day
business operations. She gained enough
knowledge on how to deal with her staff. LSE also taught her that her business
is not only for her own economic gains but also a social enterprise that helps unemployed men and women in her town and
creates even a small change in her community.
Coming home
Erin’s daughter also came to work in Hong Kong so she
extended her stay just to be with her. With her daughter also in Hong Kong,
there was no one in the Philippines to manage her business. After weighing
things, Erlin returned home after 21 years in Hong Kong.
She took over the full ownership and management of the
business. Among the first things she did was to tap social media to promote her
business. The construction of her multi-purpose center, where she will soon
operate her business, is keeping her busy.
Erlin’s involvement goes beyond her hometown something that
she learned from the LSE. Fulfilling a promise she made to Wimler during her
LSE days, she came to Davao in June 2017 to conduct training on fossilized
flower making in Bansalan. It turned out that there were also interest for the
workshop in Davao City. In the end, she conducted an additional two workshops
in Davao City for women from Samal Islands and for OFW returness.
The training in Bansalan was attended by mostly women
including some from the Bagobo-Tagabawa tribe. All in all, Erlin trained about
110 people in Davao. Some participants are now seriously planning to start
their own fossilized flower making livelihood program. Erlin showed that our
country can benefit from the skills, talents, and expertise of migrant workers
if given the right opportunity.
Erlin believes that she has still many things to learn
and therefore, she continues to consult her mentors for advice. She also
regularly attends seminars and trainings to enhance her skills and expand her
networks. Recently, she attended seminars on Business Operations, Product
Development, and Brand Equity Development.
Looking back, her 21-year stay in Hong Kong has
prepared her for the role she now assumed as a social entrepreneur. If she did
not go to Hong Kong, probably she would not have been able to attend the LSE
course. Now she felt that she is more confident to meet challenges of managing
Flowerqueen Enterprises. “I have no regrets that I went to work in Hong Kong for
21 years as a domestic helper.
I got a lot of experiences which broadened my
perception in life and I met people who have influenced and inspired me to be a
better person,” she
said. For Erlin, there is purpose to everything that happened in her life. She
faced many challenges but she always found a way to be resilient.
“My
greatest learning in Hong Kong is to be like a rubber ball not an egg, because
an egg breaks when it falls while a rubber ball bounces back,”
she said.
See Related topic:
Story 1: Alvir Catacutan
See Related topic:
Story 1: Alvir Catacutan
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