By Liezel Longboan
As we usher in 2023 and bid farewell to 2022, we thank you, all, for supporting our work in bringing you authoritative, engaging and useful articles and stories about and for Filipinos in the UK.
Here are some of our highlights for 2022:
Reporting milestones in our community
At the start of 2022, we were the first media outlet in the UK to cover the historic inclusion of the “Filipino” ethnic category in the NHS’s electronic staff record as well as in the Nursing and Midwifery Council’s (NMC) register. This was a milestone for the Filipino community as it meant that the estimated 40,000 Filipinos working in the NHS could now identify themselves as “Filipino/a.” Filipino nurses and midwives registered or planning to register with the NMC now also have the option to identify as “Filipino” with this change.
We brought you the story of Lou Angelo Aguilar and RJ Louis Garcia, the first Filipino nurses to be featured in a British TV medical documentary series.
We celebrated the late Queen Elizabeth II’s diamond jubilee in July with one of our best read articles: Queen’s Jubilee: 8 Filipino connections to the Royal family. We mourned her passing, giving you a story on Filipinos’ reaction to her death.
Before the year ended, we looked at Filipino nurses’ response to the first and largest nurses’ strike in the UK. We interviewed nursing leaders in the community as well as a newly arrived nurse who decided to join the industrial action.
Providing information and advice
We covered the Philippines elections in June, providing much-needed information on how overseas voters can update their addresses online.
We wrote about the latest travel advisory to enter the Philippines based on the government’s new policy. We also provided a listing of different 2022 Philippine Independence Day events taking place around the UK.
Filipino Mothers UK is an influential group in Britain, providing support and advice to hundreds of its members. We featured the group on its first anniversary, highlighting its important work for immigrant mums.
We also asked how Filipino mums are responding to the cost of living crisis, with single mums finding it harder to cope with the situation.
Celebrating our Filipino heritage
We featured UK-based Filipino authors Candy Gourlay, Carla Montemayor and Jules Calonia. All three of them talked about the lack of Philippine representation in British literature and their desire to bring Filipino history and culture into the mainstream.
We had an article on must-read Philippine books as well as an online Filipino children’s bookshop based in the UK. We wrote about the Philippines’ first time joining the London Book fair, one of the largest international rights trade fairs in the world.
To highlight how Filipino restaurants are growing in number in the UK, we featured seven restaurants serving Filipino food from London to Belfast.
In November, we sponsored the first ever essay writing competition for Filipino children to celebrate World Children’s Day. Children ages 5 to 10 from across the UK shared their thoughts on the question: What are my favourite things about being Filipino or the Philippines?
Working with clients
Between July and August, we worked with our first ever client, Our Place Is Here, a coalition of charities working for the rights of migrant domestic workers. We published a series of articles to support their campaign to raise people’s awareness about the UK’s Overseas Domestic Worker Visa policy which ties domestic workers to abusive employers.
Collaborating with the Filipino Domestic Workers Association, Kanlungan, Kalayaan and The Voice of Domestic Workers, we wrote four articles on Filipino domestic workers in the UK: who they are, their stories, their struggles, and what they are doing to respond to their situation.
Our main article was republished by The Sun Hong Kong, a Filipino diaspora news organisation with the largest readership in Hong Kong.
Mentoring ethnic minority journalism students
In 2022, we mentored a total of seven young journalism students from Bournemouth University. Five of them were overseas students coming from India, Indonesia, Malaysia, United Arab Emirates and Nigeria.
Aman Singh, a masters student in multimedia journalism, said that “Writing for Tinig UK helped me understand what it feels like to be a minority in a country and how you would want your stories to be heard by others,” he says.
The year ahead
2023 is going to be a busy year as we plan to embark on projects that would document our heritage, support businesses and strengthen the work of organisations serving Filipinos in the UK.
We look forward to your continued support as we aim to work more closely with community groups this year.
