Economic Resource Center for Overseas Filipinos

LUXEMBOURG: Dolly Navales-Schmitz is currently president and founding trustee of the Letzebuergesch-Philippinnesch Aktion fir den Development, asbl (LPAD). LPAD is an organization of Filipinos and Luxembourgish organizing philanthropic and social investment projects to benefit members and the Philippines. She is also a corproate action senior agent at the Mizuho Trust and Banking Luxembourg S.A. This native of Bacolod City, and a BS Accountancy graduate of the Univerity of Negros Occidental-Recoletos, is married to trade union leader Jean Paul Schmitz (a former president of LPAD).

ITALY: Dr. Cristina Liamzon. Tina is a development consultant on food security, rural development, civil society organizations, gender and migrant concerns. She is a co-founder of the Associazione Pilipinas OFSPES, based in Rome, Italy, its sister organization, OFSPES in Manila, and ERCOF in 1999. She serves as coordinator for the Leadership and Social Entrepreneurship Training Course for OFWs with the Ateneo School of Government.

NETHERLANDS AND HONGKONG: Leila Rispens Noel. Lalay is Senior Advisor for International Network of Alternative Financial Institutions (INAFI International), a network of more than 300 microfinance institutions located in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. Lalay is an original co-founder of ERCOF in 1999, and is also now President and Co-founder of WIMLER Partnership for Social Progress, Inc. Before relocating to Hong Kong in 2009, Leila worked for eight years at Oxfam Novib (Netherlands) as program manager for Migration and Development.

DENMARK: Filomenita Mongaya Hoegsholm. Nitnit is one of the first graduates of the Institute of Mass Communications at the University of the Philippines-Diliman. She settled in Europe four decades ago, after graduate studies in NY, USA (M.Sc.Radio-TV-film, Syracuse U). Nitnit was absorbed into the migration environment while practicing journalism and editing publications in this field in Denmark and for shorter periods in NL and UK. Co-founder of Babaylan, the Phil. Women’s Network and Founding Chair of Babaylan DK, she simultaneously works as well with multiethnic women and feminist organizations (Soldue, EMKR and KULU in DK) and across Europe (BWEN and WIDE/EU) where she has worked to assert women immigrants' rights since the late 1980s, at elective top posts and as Editor of magazines, with distinction, having gender and ethnic equality as raison d’etre, at informal as well as formal workplaces.

Because of recent globalization trends, she has been very active in the mobilisation for strengthening au pairs (the latest group deployed by the Phil government to EU countries), in cooperation with labour unions, women NGOs and other stake holders, eg. services delivery and capacity building, especially economic literacy. Babaylan DK organized the first modules on financial literacy in DK, and will continue to fill this gap.

NETHERLANDS: Basco Tomas A. Fernandez has had years of experience doing research and education work among indigenous and fisherfolk communities in the Philippines. Moving to the Netherlands in 1991, he initiated coop formation among oil rig workers and womens’ organisations, whilst continuing studies and policy research on Filipino seafarer communities in Rotterdam, Amsterdam and other European ports. He also pioneered e-learning among domestic workers in Amsterdam and engaged them in remittance for development initiatives. He is currently overall coordinator of Maria 4 MDGs Consortium an EC-UN Joint Migration and Development Initiative, that linked diaspora women to rural women economic enterprise in 6 Mindanao municipalities and Senior Policy Advisor for the Diaspora Forum 4 Development, a platform of 44 organisations from 23 countries in the Netherlands.

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND: Edgardo Gutierrez. Egay has worked at the World Health Organization in Geneva as an IT specialist and business analyst since 1996. He has extensive experience in the design and delivery of management information systems to both international organizations and the private sector. From 1999 to 2005, he helped found and operate Balikaral Center, a free computer and language skills training center, where during that period, over 600 students, primarily Filipino migrant women, enrolled into the Balikaral program. Prior to Geneva, he worked as a researcher and lecturer in Physics at the University of the Philippines, specializing in quantum optics, semiconductor lasers, and fluid dynamics.

BERN, SWITZERLAND: Annabelle Hefti-Misa has a Masters degree in Psychology from California; and lived in the USA for four years before moving to Switzerland. Anny founded the Samahang Pilipina with other Filipinas in Switzerland that later also founded the European Filipina Network, Babaylan. Anny worked at the Counseling Center for Foreign Women in Bern where she came in close contact with migrant women and their issues. She made a film "Breaking the Silence, Victims No More," featuring the lives of domestic workers in Switzerland. Anny's biggest challenge was the Children's Foundation that she established in San Carlos City, Negros Island in the 1980s. The Foundation existed for 25 years.