I’ve talked about Jam, one of my VAs, before.
He doesn’t work from home. He carpools his daughter and several other kids to an exclusive school 25km away from his house.
Driving that far every day is expensive and exhausting. So instead of going home, he stays at school and works from his car.
At least, that’s what he used to do. Julia (one of my writers and also Jam’s wife) just sent me a picture of where he works now.
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Working in the car isn’t very conducive to productivity. So for the past year, Jam’s been working at a local coffee shop in a nearby barangay.
I actually grew up in that community. Back then (1990s), it was a heavily forested area with an army base because it was constantly under threat from insurgents. It was a scary, dark, and crime-ridden community.
I recall that in high school, I occasionally had to hitch a ride on army trucks just to get around the neighborhood, as there were barely any roads, and the ones that did exist were often too muddy or rocky for most vehicles. It was very dangerous for anyone to be seen walking on the roads after dark. Many of our neighbors were either soldiers or worked in the army base in some capacity.
So, imagine my surprise when Jam took me there, and it now resembles a typical middle-class Filipino community. It has a small chapel, a sari-sari store, food stores, and, of course, a coffee shop.
It now has paved roads and actual public transport (jeepneys, buses, and tricycles). It’s just one jeepney ride away from a hospital, a mall, several schools, and churches.
It’s typical for residential communities to have small businesses built by overseas Filipino workers. The local coffee shop, sari-sari store, and barbershop pictured here were built by a couple of overseas Filipino workers.
For decades, money sent by overseas Filipino workers was the primary means of sustaining communities outside Metro Manila. That’s because they’re often the only ones who can afford to build homes, businesses, and have money to spend on local shops.
Now, that’s no longer the case.
It’s people like Jam and his “officemates,”– other online workers who also occasionally visit this coffee shop when they want to work away from home, the ones that build and grow these communities.
There’s a large community of Filipino virtual assistants here, which is why it has several coffee shops, a co-working space, and a laundry shop catering to people who work from home. We even have work dates with our project manager, Joven, in this coffee shop on occasion.
John has often discussed how hiring Filipino workers changes not only their lives but also the lives of their families. What I wanted to show here is how transformative it can be for communities as well.
We’re the regular customers who help keep businesses afloat.
We’re the new market that encourages new companies to set up shop.
We’re the valued citizens who encourage local governments to invest in infrastructure that attracts us to work from home and spend our hard-earned money within the community.
What employers pay their Filipino workers may not seem that much, but collectively, we contribute around 8-9% yearly to the Philippines’ GDP.
That’s money that goes into communities and makes them better, like the one where Jam is currently working. It may have been a scary, violent place back then. But now it’s a thriving, peaceful community that any Filipino would be proud to call home.
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The good that you do when you hire a Filipino VA has a compounding effect.
Improving their lives improves the lives of the people around them.
They’re not just improving their lives to move into better communities; they’re part of building better communities.
John