Overseas Filipino Workers Turned Entrepreneurs: Breaking Stereotypes, Redefining Paradigms

• Main Authors: Santiago, Joseph Sedfrey S, Sacramento, M.R., Estuar, Jose Atanacio L
• Format: text
• Published: Archīum Ateneo 2009
• Subjects: Development Studies; International and Area Studies
• Online Access: https://archium.ateneo.edu/marketing-and-law-faculty-pubs/4; http://www.ipc-ateneo.org/content/overseas-filipino-workers-turned-entrepreneurs-breaking-stereotypes-redefining-paradigms
• Institution: Ateneo De Manila University

Twenty-six overseas Filipino workers and four OFW family members share their entrepreneurial journeys in this book. They tell us when they decided to try their hand at business and their reasons for choosing the business, where they sourced their funds, and who they tapped for acquiring technical skills in running their venture. With candor, they recount their hardships as start-ups and how they coped with these and other adversities. Some have succeeded, while others are still trying to make a go of their business. But they all provide invaluable lessons that could benefit other OFWs who plan to take the same route. The stories also show the roles stakeholders of OFW remittances could play in these entrepreneurial ventures, aside from the government, whose relevance is pronounced during the start-up phase. It is family members of the migrant worker, as part of the OFW's social capital, who figure prominently in the stories, however. And they matter, whether the OFW toiled as a factory worker in Taiwan, earned lots of yen as a Japayuki, sent allotment as a seafarer, or escaped penniless from war-stricken Iraq.