Ask anyone who has built a life in the Gulf, and they will tell you the same thing: the distance between desperation and stability is often just one person willing to help. For thousands of expatriates scattered across Saudi Arabia, that person has a name — Shendie Buenaflor.
At 34, Buenaflor works as a Human Capital Specialist for Apparel Group, supporting a workforce of roughly 26,000 employees across the company’s many brands. Her days are spent in the thick of employee relations — workplace disputes, employment concerns, and the kind of legal tangles that can leave a migrant worker sleepless. She has handled around 17 cases involving employment disputes, several tied to fake job contracts and illegal recruitment. But the polished HR title sitting on her business card hides a far rougher origin story.
The years that built the spine
Long before she was advising on labor law, Buenaflor was standing on her feet for 9 to 12 hours a day in sales and labor jobs back in the Philippines, earning what she bluntly calls “very low provincial wages.” She left for her first overseas job at just 18. “Those early years were physically exhausting and financially difficult,” she recalls, “but they built my strength, patience, and determination to keep going despite hardships.”
The climb was steep but real. By 22, she had worked her way up from rank-and-file to operations manager in international fashion retail. Then the Gulf job market shifted, and the ladder she had climbed was pulled out from under her.
The moment that nearly ended it
Starting over from a lower position broke something in her — for a while. “That time I was giving up and tired,” she admits. “It was not easy, but I chose to rebuild instead of give up.”
The hardest test came not from the job market but from a courtroom. Early in her time abroad, Buenaflor faced harsh treatment, isolation, and a false legal case that, by her account, nearly led to imprisonment. Alone and afraid, she did something most people in her position never consider: she taught herself Saudi labor law to defend herself. She won. “That experience changed my life—it turned my pain into strength and shaped my passion to help others facing injustice in the workplace.”
Turning survival into service
That hard-won knowledge became her calling. Today, expatriates across the Gulf know her as the person who helps them find work and untangle employment problems. “The most satisfying part of my work is seeing someone go from uncertainty to stability,” she says, “knowing that I played a role in giving them hope, dignity, and a chance for a better future.”
Her ambitions now point homeward. Buenaflor hopes to eventually return to the Philippines as a public servant, building programs for vulnerable groups — particularly the elderly and children who have, in her words, lost direction in life.
To kababayans grinding it out abroad, her advice is shaped by everything she survived: be wise with money, guard your trust carefully, learn your rights, and speak up when something is wrong. “Every hardship has a purpose,” she says, “and every sacrifice you make abroad is for a better life for you and your family.”
