In Damayan, you will meet many kinds of people. They perform a wide range of jobs in hospitality, healthcare, food service, and more, though the prevailing majority are in domestic work—nannies, caregivers, housekeepers, home cooks. They are parents, raising children who are either back home in the Philippines, or newly reunited with them in New York City.

I, like many Filipinos, flew to the United States seeking opportunity. I came to pursue my graduate education, which places some distance, and privilege, between my position and that of many members of Damayan. But, as someone who has lived her entire life in the Philippines, their story is deeply familiar to me. Dictator Marcos’ labor export policy in the 1970s, which commodified the country’s working class, as well as economic strife, has led to a present where virtually everyone has a loved one who has gone abroad to make ends meet. Migration’s branches stretch far across the sea to America, Europe, and the Middle East, but its roots run deep and knotted in the soil of our home.

Many in Damayan reached high school or college before becoming domestic workers. Many others are middle-aged, married, and hold bachelor's degrees, but when the deeply impoverished Philippines provided them with no possibilities to earn within their profession, they were forced to come to the States in search of employment to support their family. Here, they look after American families: they clean their bathrooms, cook their meals, pick up their children from school, and care for their elderly parents.

I approached Damayan in July 2023 wanting to lend my visual communication skills to a grassroots organization. Beyond that, I was researching ways to illustrate forced migration and displacement. And beyond even that—I missed home, and sought people who spoke my language, cooked my food, and understood the immense effort and quiet loss it takes to move from the Philippines to America. They understand this far deeper than I possibly could: others often misperceive migrant workers to be selfish and uncaring for leaving their children behind to work abroad, when it is for them a painful necessity.

The lack of recognition of domestic work as work has led to a widely unregulated industry: many Filipinos arrived in America on tourist visas, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation. Their employers made them work overtime or forced them to perform duties beyond their original agreement, while withholding their wages and passports or threatening them with deportation.

Several came to Damayan to seek help out of this situation. Since then, they have returned time and time again to attend the organization’s monthly meetings, legal clinics, health screenings, Know Your Rights trainings and workshops. They help the staff with organizing these events, bring trays of food to share, orient new members, and trade stories and advice as worker-leaders in training.

I volunteered to set up registration tables, hand out forms, and click through slideshows. As a researcher I took care to be helpful and never invasive. Damayan staff worked to protect attendees and their privacy. Attorney consultations happened behind closed doors, and every meeting opened with the same reminder: stories shared in this room do not leave it.

But this did not mean that generosity was in short supply. I was welcomed to these events the same way the organization would welcome anyone in need of resources, referrals, or community. In the narrow hallways and modestly-furnished rooms of Damayan’s headquarters, a refuge from exploitation and discrimination had been formed. A home had been made.

Members of Damayan see it as a community that leaves no one behind, that helps them to make sense of the political, social, and economic situations in America and the Philippines while teaching them about their rights within both.

They come to Damayan with the goal of a future where domestic work is recognized socially and legally for what it is: “the work that makes all work possible.”