By The SUN
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| Villar poses with a banner of her beloved DWC |
They call her “Nanay,” the Tagalog word for mother, and today
(July 7) the surrogate mom of tens of thousands of Filipino domestic helpers in
Hong Kong who make up the online group,
Domestic Workers Corner, was jubilant.
Rodelia Pedro Villar said she shed tears of joy when her
friend’s employer shared her today’s article in Hong Kong’s
leading English-language newspaper, the South China Morning Post, about her
being nominated for the Spirit of Hong Kong Award.
The annual award co-organized by the SCMP and property
developer Sino Group was meant to “recognize remarkable people whose
accomplishments may go unnoticed”.
The feat was made even more remarkable by Villar becoming
the first Filipino in Hong Kong to be
nominated for the award.
It also came just weeks after she made it as a fellow of
Resolve Foundation Hong Kong, a highly selective program that provides
empowerment training to community leaders who come from various ethnic groups
and fields.
“I was crying. I can’t describe how I felt, I was
overwhelmed. All of a sudden, I realized that we have done so much in DWC,”
Villar said in a telephone interview.
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| The SCMP article announcing Villar's nomination |
She said she didn’t even realize the impact of what she and
the group had been doing to help her fellow helpers because after one case was
resolved, they’d move on to the next.
There is no respite to what DWC does, day in and day out,
because of the many problems confronting Filipino domestic workers in Hong Kong.
Villar thanked the various groups that helped her find
solutions to problems shared with her group by distressed migrants, including the
Philippine Consulate and its attached agencies, as well as Hong
Kong’s Equal Opportunities Commission.
DWC’s founder also extended gratitude for the support given
her group by various non-government organizations like the Mission for Migrant Workers, Help for
Domestic Helpers and PathFinders, which nominated her for the Spirit of HK
award.
As well, she thanked The SUN, for which she had written
about the plight of the countless migrant workers who had sought DWC’s
help, and had nominated her for the Resolve
fellowship.
But Villar reserved her biggest “thank you” to all her
fellow “admins” and members of the DWC, who have been very supportive of the group that started out only as a means to share cooking
tips with newly arrived migrants in Hong Kong.
Over time, DWC’s “It’s All About Food” morphed into several sub-groups,
including “DWC Help” which tackles hard issues faced by workers; “DWC Learning
and Social Group” which provides tutorials on various subjects, including accessing
the Consulate’s online sites; and the more personal “DWC Lovely Corner”.
Villar, who says she was too shy to be known by her real
name when she started DWC, used the name "Lovely" to introduce herself to the group, and the
name, along with “Nanay”, has stuck.
Villar, 42, and married, started DWC on Facebook in 2017 in her desire to
connect instantly with her fellow Filipino domestic workers, especially
newcomers who needed help adjusting to life in Hong Kong.
Coming from her native Antique province more than 17 years ago, Villar's own struggles coping with working and living in Hong Kong made her realize the importance of having a group where migrant workers could vent and ask for help, or even just sympathy.
In time, the mostly mothers who came to Hong Kong to earn a living
scouring toilet bowls and putting up with insults, physical and sometimes sexual
assaults from slave-driving employers, have found in DWC a refuge from their
myriad of problems.
The helpers, homesick, burdened by their menial work, entangled
in relationships they get into, menaced by debt, targeted by money launderers
and mule-hunting drug cartels, have found a helping hand from fellow OFWs
brought together by the group.
Members have become so at home with DWC that the page
content has turned into a mix of everything, from work issues to personal
hobbies and matters of the heart, such that urgent issues get buried under
layers of other mundane cares that members brought up.
For a domestic helper who is on call 15 to 18 hours day, six
days a week, keeping the network together is a mighty task, especially when pockets
of revolt resulting from a clash in personalities, emerge.
Villar’s advocacy, however, is not confined to the Internet.
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| ConGen Tejada is all praises for Villar for her initiative in helping passport applicants |
Two years ago, she led her group in volunteering their only
free day in the week to helping various service and livelihood activities at
the Philippine Overseas Labor Office, foremost of which was to help workers
deal with the problematic registration for the overseas employment certificate.
Together with the then Labor Attache Jalilo dela Torre and
various NGO leaders, Villar also helped organize outreach sorties to far-flung
districts of Hong Kong. Apart from seminars on such topics as worker and gender
rights and coping with depression, the team also provided free basic health
services such as blood pressure an glucose testing, as part of Dela Torre’s
HealthWise project.
Most recently, she offered to help buy self-stamped envelopes for Filipino migrant workers applying for new passports and do not have time during regular days to sneak out to the post office to secure them. Consul General Raly Tejada met up with Villar to personally thank her for her volunteer work.
At any time of day or night, when she’s not busy doing house
work, Villar takes calls or messages from distressed workers who were thrown
out the house or tormented to their wits’ end by employers. She then
coordinates their rescue, if needed, with fellow DWC admins and other groups
that can be activated readily to help.
On the very rare occasions that she is free from these
extracurricular cares, Villar could be seen with some of her “daughters” hiking
Hong Kong trails, picnicking on some country park, or taking a dip in the sea.
It will be a big day for all of them says Villar, if she wins
the highly coveted Spirit of HK Award.
(The award will be decided partially through online voting. Watch this space or the DWC Help Facebook page on how you can help Nanay Villar win the award).
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