Liezel Longboan
As we leave 2023 behind, I’m reminded of the power of bayanihan – the Filipino sense of community spirit that helped us break new ground this year despite our limited resources. Our sense of bayanihan also helped our community end the year with a stronger sense of voice and visibility through the various individual and collective efforts we have made in diverse fields.
We want to thank you all for supporting our work in celebrating and strengthening the voice of Filipinos across the UK in the past year.
We especially want to thank contributors, volunteers, businesses, community organisations and individuals who have all helped to make it possible for us to continue serving and making an impact in our community and beyond.
With your support, we successfully marked our third anniversary with the Voice and Visibility for Filipino-British Women in Business, the first in-person professional and business networking event for Filipino women in Britain. We also launched two new advice columns to offer authoritative information on parenting and legal matters to kababayans across the UK.
Here are our highlights for 2023:
Offering parenting and legal advice
Filipinos have specific information needs as immigrants and we wanted to help address these needs which are not often provided by existing organisations or media outlets. We regularly provide helpful advice on a variety of topics, whether it’s about the latest immigration rules or how to register as an overseas voter.
In 2023, we launched two columns to offer trustworthy advice to readers. In March, we started Keep Kalmado and Mother On, a parenting advice column to address the particular concerns faced by Filipino parents. Filipino Mothers UK (FMUK) founder and primary school teacher Catherine Wigley has been writing on topics often discussed by the members of this self-help group. Bibliophile and stay-at-home mum Maika Carrillo has also been sharing her tips about books for children. Look out for more timely advice on Pinoy parenting in the coming months.
In September, we launched The UK Law and You, a legal advice section where Filipino legal experts offer authoritative insights on immigration, employment, family and other areas of law. Filipina lawyer Danna Quinto of Lawher and Company Solicitors will be joined by other leading experts to write about relevant legal issues faced by members of our community.
Raising the profile of Filipino entrepreneurs
In May, we launched the Tinig UK Business Directory, the top listing for businesses serving Filipinos in Britain. From Filipino food to fashion, architecture to virtual assistants, find the information you need to get the product or service you want.
Come October, we successfully achieved what seemed to be an impossible task: organise the first in-person Filipino business networking event within three months and with a small budget! Since we started in 2020, we have been featuring Filipino businesses and entrepreneurs as they continue to increase in numbers in Britain. Thanks to the warm support of Filipino and British businesses and individuals, we were able to bring together some 70 women (and six men!) entrepreneurs and professionals for an interactive networking event in London.
We had four amazing women panellists – Elaine dela Cruz, Paula Braiden, Maria Garbutt-Lucero and Catherine Wigley – who all inspired listeners with their insights about being immigrant professionals and entrepreneurs.
The attendees described the event as informative, inspiring and empowering. They all agreed that we need more events like this which offer talks and discussions about what it means to be a Filipino entrepreneur in the UK. Look out for our next networking event in 2024!
Empowering women through advocacy training
Between January and May, we facilitated three in-person advocacy training sessions for the Filipino Domestic Workers Association (FDWA), a group for and led by Filipino domestic workers. The training aimed to help them develop an advocacy strategy to gather support to improve their working conditions.
“The training gave us the chance to mine our wealth of experiences doing domestic work and provided us with the tools to use these experiences to further our advocacy work,” said Nina Rivera, FDWA secretary. We trained at least 30 women over four months in 2023.
During Women’s Month in March, we launched “Britain’s Inspiring Filipino Women” series to celebrate the outstanding contributions of nine Filipino women from diverse backgrounds. From education to human rights, beauty to healthcare, Filipino women have been contributing to making Britain a safer, more equitable place to live.
Highlighting Filipino artists and healthcare workers
We marked the 75th anniversary of the NHS by looking at the contributions of Filipino nurses as well as the individual awards some of them have won in the last six years.
We also featured a variety of Filipino writers and artists who are shaping the wider conversations about immigrant Filipinos in Britain: Paris Zarcilla, Candy Gourlay, Sha Supangan, Ramon Tenoso, Rogelio Braga and Rhine Bernardino.
From organising networking events to giving advocacy training to community groups, documenting our specific issues and achievements and to creating a business directory for Filipino-British businesses, our mission is to make Filipinos more visible and our voices stronger.
From the appointment of Oliver Soriano as the first Filipino chief nurse in the NHS to the film debut of Paris Zarcilla, the first Filipino-British director to launch a film in the UK and internationally, 2023 has seen a stronger voice and visibility from the Filipino community.
As we embark on 2024, we are excited to continue working with community groups, businesses, associations and individuals to pursue our collective goals where our contributions as Filipino immigrants are recognised and valued in Britain.
