Monday, January 21, 2008 Editorials: “Wais” (wise) OFWs
THE Internet held more than the promise of online chats for Rosa, a 35-year-old nurse working in the Middle East (real name withheld).
Loneliness for the infant son and husband she left in Carcar, Cebu turned her into a Netizen. But it wasn’t to chat, shop online or surf for showbiz news.
Rosa wanted to know how to make the best use of her earnings. Her ambition to provide for her son’s education and her family’s future without necessitating overseas work again propelled her to spend her free hours after work with a friend’s Internet-connected laptop.
Through Google, she found the website, www.ofwjournalism.net, which carries “Stories for the Faraway Filipino.”
At the bottom of the home page was a link she clicked to read the article, “How to take care of your money?”
Rosa answered a five-question survey to gauge her “financial literacy.” After reading the primer, “Pagpahalaga sa Perang Kinita: A Pinoy Guide to Managing Finances,” she learned that, contrary to her belief that she should just save her earnings in the bank, there were other tips for meeting goals on education, housing and eventual retirement.
As recommended by the primer to be the primary step for improving financial literacy, Rosa e-mailed the link to her husband.
Stretching campaign
Government and nongovernment organizations (NGOs) are stepping up a campaign to raise the financial literacy of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs).
According to the Philippine News Agency, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) is spearheading a government campaign to convince OFWs and their families to “stretch every dollar.”
Pooling one’s earnings to create investment funds is the OFW’s first step to becoming an entrepreneur, says the BSP. Officials caution OFWs from solely relying on the peso’s depreciation.
Other parties bring financial literacy education to the online portal to reach overseas Filipinos. One of these is the OFW Journalism Consortium, a nonprofit coalition of advocates of OFWs and journalists that began as a media advocacy project of the Jesuits-led Institute on Church and Social Issues.
The Consortium uses the media to reach out to OFWs through its news packets of articles on migration concerns. One-day millionaires
According to the Ateneo de Manila University’s Economic Policy Reform and Advocacy (Epra), which produced the financial management primer uploaded on www.ofwjournalism.net, case studies of and interviews with OFWs show that workers and families that focus only on present consumption, without savings and insurance, end up where they started: in misery.
The Epra identifies a phenomenon among OFW families to depend solely on the earnings of the overseas worker. Ideally, the worker should plan with his or her family to set aside for savings and protection because no overseas employer covers these social security benefits; motivate the children to get a college degree and work to augment the overseas earnings and lessen the financial and psychological burden on the OFW; and budget the family income as overseas contracts have no guarantee beyond expiration.
The Epra primer lists down the major needs families have to consider, aside from regular consumption: pre-need educational plans, housing goals, health budget, insurance, memorial plans and retirement plans.
Leftover money should be invested, after weighing a potential investment’s safety, liquidity and return.
Former OFW turned stock trader Antonio Ranque told Epra in an interview that he first became interested in investments when he was assigned for two decades in Saudi Arabia. He regularly read the business sections of newspapers, as well as researched on the Internet, because, as an OFW without his family with him, he had a lot of time after work.
