LoveYourself Stages Play Highlighting the HIV/AIDS Crisis and Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs)
By Kris Tangco Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) are one of the groups vulnerable to the HIV/AIDS crisis the Philippines is facing. Addressing the plight of OFWs by highlighting and bringing awareness to their struggles, HIV awareness and advocacy group LoveYourself, in partnership with the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA) will be staging Care Divas , a play about the lives of five transgender OFWs. Background on OFWs The Filipino diaspora has brought an estimated total of 10.4 million ethnic Filipinos to seek opportunities abroad, roughly 2.3 million of which are OFWs [ 1 ] . As of 2015, OFW remittances sent home by Filipinos abroad amounted to almost 30 billion US Dollars [ 2 ] , representing around more than 10% of the national economy. The Philippines is one of the world’s largest suppliers of human labor - in fact, the country is a pioneer in organized labor migration [ 3 ] . Deployment of Filipinos abroad started during the Martial Law years when legislation forma...