Jonathan Laxamana ‘24
I helped PAWIS in organizing and distributing outreach materials in conjunction with the Santa Clara County Office of Labor Standards Enforcement (OLSE) to care homes and other service workers in San Jose. The outreach material consisted of flyers informing workers about the organization's advice line for legal assistance, information about upcoming organization events, and other documents that included guidelines for navigating wage theft claims, abuse, and other worker concerns.
I also met with workers from Fight for 15 for coordination and training on what effective outreach looks like. Some other projects that I helped that would have not gotten done without my help complete included organizing and staffing the PAWIS's meet and greet and conducting worker interviews for the organization to understand some of the conditions they face. I also assisted with other various in-person and virtual workshops that the organization held and was able to integrate myself into some of the organization's day-to-day tasks.
I wanted to improve my Filipino language conversational skills as well as translation skills, Canva/website design, as well as data analysis skills. When it comes to improving my Filipino language conversational skills, I feel like they've improved somewhat; however, I still felt a large language barrier because a majority of the organization's members didn't necessarily speak the same languages that I was familiar with hearing/speaking growing up. I was surprised at how difficult it would be to communicate with recent migrants, which could be due to the internal anxieties I had with not wanting to convey the wrong message/translations. It was often nerve-wracking to put skills into practice.
I also wanted to learn how organizations like PAWIS work with other existing organizations in the Santa Clara County, as well as PAWIS's relation to the Office of Labor Standards Enforcement. I think that learning how various organizations work together toward common goals was a valuable part of my experience, and through practice, was something that definitely resonated with me and helped me grow as a fellow. I learned to value the importance of collective work and as a result, greatly improved my communication skills through interactions both with organization members and community members outside the organization. This allowed me to better understand how PAWIS is able to build relationships with other Filipino organizations to better combat the developing political situation in the Philippines with regards to the recent Philippine election. I also learned to be readily adaptable/flexible to the organization's/my own changing needs, which was reflected in how I was able to coordinate the tail-end of my experience with the organization when personal challenges arose.