By: Jo Anne D.P. Villarosa*

For most developed countries, citizens travel and live abroad and it is considered a privilege. A wild adventure for many; a search for self for some. Whatever the agenda, citizens of developed countries fly away from their homeland with excitement. They leave by their own free will and they come home whenever they wish.

The rest of the world is another story.

We Filipinos, for example, leave our homeland for many reasons. The lucky ones leave for the rich learning that traveling provides. Other fortunate souls leave for better education or training, some leave for a change of lifestyle, and then there are those who leave to survive. Unfortunately, the reason one might have for leaving the country is largely dependent on one’s social and economic status in our unjustly stratified nation.

It is one of the greatest ironies of our culture: family members living oceans away from each other and elementary textbooks saying that Filipino families are very closely knit. Yes, the closeness can exist despite the distance but one would think that it wouldn’t seem so natural for Filipinos to leave their families behind. The Philippines becomes a distant home to uprooted Filipinos, and after many years of being away, that distant home becomes a vague concept that departs from the world of reality and remains in the realm of nostalgia and memory.

Filipino doctors signing up to be nurses, Filipino teachers selling cosmetics, Filipino engineers securing hotel lobbies – it seems that our current migration pattern is not only taking our people away from their families, but it is also taking them away from themselves, from what they set out to accomplish in life. Filipinos are transforming themselves just to get out and stay out of the country. Worse, it is the very Filipinos who are much needed in the country who are leaving.

How have we as a people allowed ourselves and our nation to come to this?

The government and its enthusiasm in exporting Filipinos in exchange for remittances is an easy cop out. It is true that they are worthy of such blame, but we should also be pointing our fingers to ourselves. It is our country, our homeland, and yet we turn our backs on it now that things are not so sunny and abundant. We have become too complacent – perhaps too exhausted – to exert the mental, emotional and physical energy to really own our country and take care of it and improve it.

But let us remember that we Filipinos are a people of passion and conviction. We are capable of believing in something greater than ourselves, beyond ourselves, and we stand up and fight for our beliefs. We Filipinos have innovative minds, diligent hands, and big loving hearts. We can lead and we can nurture. We are versatile people.
We just need to step back, re-evaluate, and give more, sacrifice more, go above and beyond ourselves. Wisely direct our passion and conviction towards rightfully electing a trustworthy government, truly believe that our country can still get better, welcome and accept foreign help without condoning exploitation of our people and resources, and nurture what is left of our youth’s idealism. We need to accomplish all these with commitment – unfailing, wholehearted, steadfast commitment. We need to have a firm grip around hope. Because it will be hard and it won’t come easy.

We must take it upon ourselves to make the Philippines the sort of country we want to have. We can help remind and inspire one another to be better and wiser citizens. We can also generate and support innovative ideas sprouting in different communities all over the country. In certain places in the Philippines, passionate and dedicated individuals are rising up, heeding the call to serve their fellow Filipinos. Be it for equality in health care, technological advancement in agriculture or the improvement of our small sari-sari stores, there are outstanding individuals pursuing goals bigger than themselves. These individuals – social entrepreneurs as Ashoka would call them – spend their days and nights working towards a better Philippines. With the wisdom of the old and the promise of the new, each one of us can contribute and do our part in rebuilding our country.

We were truly a great nation once – our neighboring countries looked to us for ideas and models to improve their own economies. We cannot say the same thing today, but that doesn’t mean that we should just leave. We are responsible for our country and where it is heading. It is not just the government or the elite members of society who have the power to change things for the better. All of us Filipinos are responsible for that change and we are capable of making it. We cannot expect for our country to take care of us if we are not willing to care for it first.

This is not a commentary on whether the Filipino diaspora is right or wrong. It is neither entirely one nor the other. But we can take action now to rebuild our country and ourselves as its people. We can take little steps forward until we are home again.

*Jo Anne D.P. Villarosa is an intern at Ashoka, a global organization that identifies and invests in leading social entrepreneurs. Jo Anne left the Philippines when she was 16 and is back for good.