When you're an OFW, you have to sacrifice being without your family, leaving your country, and staying in a place where you don't know anyone and maybe don't even understand their language. All that is to help the very family you left behind and give yourself a better life.
Jan Marvin Frias knows this by heart because his parents, too, were OFWs. And now that he is also an OFW, he is eager to share his insights about working, career, and choosing your own path -- no matter how different and weird other people think it is.
You see, Jan Marvin Frias was studying in Taiwan to become an Engineer, a noble profession which a lot of Filipinos believe to earn a hefty sum of salary. But one day, a friend offered him to work as a part timer while studying.
He admitted that he had a scholarship which was more than enough for his needs and wants, but Jan Marvin decided to give it a try.
He soon learned that by just working in a grocery's stockroom in Taiwan, he earns about 700 Taiwan Dollars per 5 hours of work. That's PHP 1,200 here already!
He said that this is much bigger than what he could ever earn in the country. He even computed that if he worked for 10 hours each day, he'd be getting PHP 50,000 every 20 days! And that's just by lifting boxes in a stock room. It's not easy, but it pays well. It also helped him to know that there are several Filipinos working in the stock room. They usually share their stories and have each other's backs whenever needed.
That's when he finally realized that no matter how difficult it is to be away from your loved ones, a lot of OFWs tend to stick it out and work hard because the money they earn overseas could not match the amount that they could earn in the Philippines. Jan Marvin ended his post with a final note for the family these OFWs left behind: to use this opportunity to better themselves and be inspired to help their families, too. Because let's face it. There are partners of OFWs who tend to engage in elicit love affairs due to loneliness.
However, we are forgetting that the reason money is hard to come by for Filipnos is because of the lack of better opportunities for Filipinos here. Many Filipinos with good bachelor's degrees tend to choose to get underemployed just because the opportunities for their field is quite limited. What we need to do is get help from the government and ask for a better labor landscape for the betterment of our nation and our society as a whole.
Source: KAMI