Filipino Expats Blog in Thailand

It has been a while that Siam Pinoy has featured another great Khun Pinoy. This time around, it was in Chiang Mai that we found somebody whom every Pinoy in Thailand should know of. And this is none other than Kabayan Roxanne Oddie – a leader, a humanitarian, a Pinoy who does not wish to call attention on to herself, but would rather recognize those who, along with her, champion the cause and serve the needs of the Filipino community in the north.

Siam Pinoy interviews Roxanne Oddie, President of AFT-NRC (Association of Filipinos in Thailand – Northern Region Chapter).

SP: From our meetings with some of the members, it seems the community is a mix of people from different fields and profession. How would you describe the Filipino community in Chiang Mai?

Roxanne Oddie: The Filipinos in Chiang Mai are mostly teachers and/or missionaries, a few employees in the entertainment and design/graphic works, and several Filipinas married to Thais and running family businesses.  The age range is from mid-20’s to 60’s, and there are informal “sub-groups” resulting from church affiliations. Just like most Filipinos in Bangkok and elsewhere in Thailand, we Filipinos in Chiang Mai and other nearby provinces also meet in June (Independence Day Celebration) and December (year-end party). There was a Filipino restaurant serving the Filipino community here in Chiang Mai for 25 years, aptly named Mabuhay, of course. It recently closed, but only temporarily. It will come back to be part of the Pinoy community again for a very long time.

SP: As the chosen person to lead your team of officers in terms of activities, projects and events for Pinoys in the north, for the second time now, what are some challenges as well as good experiences you have had?

Roxanne Oddie: Challenges, there have been many. Less than a year after moving into Chiang Mai, I was appointed as Communications Officer of AFT-NRC for 2005 to 2006. I started an aggressive emailing campaign, I personally encoded all the email addresses from the directory and began sending out messages to people I didn’t even know. It was a risk, but it paid off. It made people know that we were reaching out to them, that we wanted them to participate in association activities, and that we wanted to connect with them.

It was also a challenge to connect with kababayans outside of Chiang Mai. AFT-NRC has members in Lampang, Lamphun, Chiang Rai, Tak, Mae Hong Son, Phrae, Phayao, Nan, and other remote areas in the north. When planning group activities, we have to consider the traveling our kababayans have to make in order to participate.

Because there are over two hundred Filipinos in the community here, I am mindful that there are over two hundred individuals with their own ideas, feelings, priorities, and interests. One challenge was finding commonality, and promoting harmony and unity, not uniformity.

As for good experiences, there have been many as well. When I see kababayans get together and genuinely enjoy one another’s company, or forming new friendships; or when there is a kababayan in distress and the group gets together to support; or when we celebrate the personal and career successes of our members, those are good experiences.

When the group from the Philippine Embassy comes to do a Consular Outreach program, our kababayans are able to avail of consular services here in Chiang Mai and that is a very significant way of serving the Filipino community. When some of our foreign friends learn about it, they say they envy us because they say their own embassy normally does not offer such a service for them. Read the rest of this entry »

The following are photos taken during our last visit to Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai Thailand. These places are the Baguio City of Thailand. We went up there to meet some wonderful Filipinos who worked as teachers and musicians. Please click more to view the rest of the photos.

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