Patience, not haste, was the lesson Engr. Emerson Suarez offered overseas Filipino workers gathered for a plenary discussion at the OFW Global Summit 2026, held this afternoon at the M.I.C.E. Center in Quezon City. “You need to be patient in gathering knowledge in planning your business,” he told the audience, framing preparation as the foundation any returning worker should lay before launching a venture.
Suarez was one of several speakers who used the session to trace how years of labor abroad can be converted into enterprise back home. Dr. Redelma T. Macapili-Cabal pressed a point that often goes unaddressed until it is too late: workers should map out their retirement well in advance of leaving the country, rather than treating it as an afterthought of deployment.
The panel also drew on the firsthand accounts of Ms. Kaicelle Cao Atun and Ms. Jessie M. Pascual, who walked through what they had learned about running a business, leading others, and reestablishing themselves in the Philippines after stints overseas. Their testimonies leaned on lived experience rather than theory, touching on the practical decisions that shaped their return.
Running through the speakers’ stories was a shared argument: the sacrifices a single worker makes abroad can seed gains that reach well beyond the household, extending to the wider community and the country itself.
For the Department of Migrant Workers, sessions of this kind serve a deliberate purpose. The agency used the gathering to restate its position that reintegration represents the next phase of an OFW’s progress — a shift from coming home toward building a livelihood, realizing long-held plans, and opening doors for other Filipinos to follow.
