“OFWs sent about $12 billion in remittances in 2006 and they have been called heroes or the backbone of the economy,” he says. “Yet, they don’t get the same respect, opportunity or assistance as home-based Filipino businessmen or rich families. I think it’s high time OFWs be treated as Overseas Filipino Investors.”

           Development experts have said that investments in local businesses will persuade OFWs to return and settle in the Philippines when it’s time to retire. Likewise, investing locally helps stem the brain drain of both the blue- and white collar workforce. It also has the positive impact of uniting families that would otherwise remain separated due to a basic need for gainful employment.

            However, OFWs and their families tend to spend their earnings on new appliances, gadgets, and imported non-essentials, preferring to defer investments say in a house and lot that could provide continuing benefits into the future. Rather than rue the situation, Mon Gallinera put his enterprising mindset to work for himself and the global OFW community.

            In a nutshell, Mon hopes to get OFWs invest in businesses back home and then eventually expand the businesses globally.

            Big dreams? Yes. Doable? Certainly.

            Mon’s entrepreneurial inclination surfaced while he was employed as a marketing person for a product distributor in Saudi Arabia. “I practically started the company with a single product and helped expand it into a multi-product business in two years,” he recalls. “I wasn’t paid much although I had a car with a driver to take me around in sales prospecting. I eventually got to thinking I can make the same marketing effort back home and I’d be my own boss.”

            Gallinera returned to the Philippines and started a soap-making enterprise using techniques he learned while working abroad. Starting from a single soap product, he now produces a variety of soap and beauty products and applied direct marketing to expand his customer base.

            He calls his venture “Satin” for “Sariling Atin At Tulong Sa Tao, Itaguyod Natin.” He initially invited OFW families to pay a membership fee (a form of investment) in exchange for soap products to be sold at a profit. The members were then organized into a distributor’s group serving as a market channel for institutional buyers like cooperative stores and credit unions. The distribution network forms part of SAPI-OFW Development Cooperative.

            Mon claims the enterprise presently produces 5,000 bars of soap a day and his products are widely available in Laguna. He makes “good earnings” from the business, which employs about 50 people in two home-based production units.

Aside from the soap-making venture, Mon Gallinera is also a director of Praise Realty Marketing Corporation that offers prime real estate properties primarily for OFWs and their families. Mon argues, “Owning a house and lot is a crowning achievement for Filipino workers. Praise Realty targets OFWs because we have their best interests in mind as expressed in our mission and vision. They can trust that we can provide their money’s worth on the properties we offer.”

His involvement in real estate marketing is a major advantage in light of two recently launched projects directed at OFWs. The Condo Pie Investments for OFWs treat overseas workers as investors in a proposed residential and office condominium tower that will serve as the first and only OFW Headquarters in the Philippines. As an investment instrument, a separate OFW Business Club has been established and it will issue Global Filipino Privilege Cards to the condo tower investors.

Mon states, “Think about it; all these decades of migration and remittances and nothing to show for it. The OFW Headquarters will be a monument, for lack of a better word, for the struggles and heroism of Pinoy OFWs in the service of home and country. For all the noise and praise releases about the contributions of OFWs, the Headquarters will truly pay tribute to generations of OFWs and their families.”

The OFW Business Club is envisioned as an association of OFWs, Filipino migrants and businessmen. It will be a meeting space where Filipino entrepreneurs and financiers can work out, initiate and nurture business ideas into workable plans and operating enterprises.

The companies to be organized will be called Overseas Filipino Welfare Advocates Corporations, which will be owned by OFWs and Filipino migrants. Proposed businesses can range from car dealerships to telecommunications facilities to housing and real estate. Part of the attraction of the investments is that the OFW Club will be a venue for the entry into the international market of such Filipino staples as kapeng barako, virgin coconut oil and organic health and beauty soap. It will be an all-Pinoy show from the get-go.

The goal is to empower the OFW sector like the taipans. Mon feels that his initiatives are tiny steps compared to the huge demands to give rise to the next SM or SMC. It may even take two generations to realize the tallest of his big dreams.

As of this writing, Mr. Gallinera is likely to be in a key city in the U.S. or the Middle East marketing the future of his country to OFWs and Pinoy migrants wherever they may be. It’s a daunting task and since he dreamt it, Mon takes it as his mission to give OFWs the honor and recognition in prospering businesses they call their own.

By Tony Maghirang