John Jonas explores bayanihan, the Filipino culture of community support and mutual aid. He shares how one team member helped with typhoon relief, showing how this tradition of helping neighbors in crisis still shapes life in the Philippines today.
Questions this episode answers
Episode 70
January 21 (one-day leave requested)
Approximately 420 families
Eight hours one way
Typhoon Odette; Surigao City
Chapters
Hello and welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing Podcast. The podcast that's dedicated to making you better at outsourcing your work. My name is John Jonas and this is episode 70, Bayanian culture or Bayanian culture. I don't really know how it's said. What it is, is in the Philippines there's this culture of helping, lending a helping hand, stepping in where help is needed. It's kind of, it's part of their culture. You see it regularly, you see people stepping in when there's a disaster. This is kind of what makes the Philippines more resilient to these natural disasters. People step in and help out. And here' what made me want to talk about this today. So I got this email from one of those guys on my team. I'm going to read this email. So he writes the other day and says, good day John and Dan. Hope I hope all is well with you guys. I would like to ask permission to go on a one day leave this coming January 21st. Due to the fact that I was tapped to be one of the leaders of the second wave of relief operations for the Typhoon Odette victims in Surigao City. I'll be leading our team in terms of the preparation, distribution and security of the said relief packs up until we are done distributing to an estimated 420 families. I apologize for the short notice. Rest assured all my tasks for the following date will be properly endorsed and properly coordinated with our team. Looking forward to your understanding. Ben was his name. So I looked this up afterwards. To get to Surigao City, the him and the other volunteers will travel for eight hours one way, then they'll work the whole day, then they'll travel for eight hours back. All of this to help people from the typhoon which happened last month. He could have easily said, yeah, sorry, I can't do this, I have worked. He could have said, yeah, you guys, you can find someone else or let me find someone else or help you find someone else. He didn't. He said, yeah, I want to help and I think I can ask for time off and I can ask other people to help fill in my work. Which there's this like cascade here. Other people were happy to fill in his shift so that we made sure that everything got done. He goes off and serves, they serve him and get his work done for him while he's helping other people. There's a whole cascade here of help, helping, helping and helping and helping. And it's part of the culture in the Philippines. You'll notice that your ofs they want to help people. They may ask you if they can help. They may ask you to help them. Help. We during COVID they asked us, hey, there's people starving here. Is there any way you guys could help us? Yeah. Sweet. So we asked everybody, hey, who would like to help people who can buy food and pass it out? Almost everybody on our team said yes. So we sent them all money. They all went out and bought food, gave it to other people. And then we hear stories of those people passing the food on to other people who had less than them. I don't know how to say this Bayanian culture, but it's part of the Philippines. You'll notice it shows up in their work. They want to be helpful to you, to the company that they work for, and it makes the Philippines really, really good.
