Filipino Beggar in Brunei

OK! He is not a beggar, in fact he is a scholar, but their strategy makes him look like a beggar.

His name is Nino, I met him while having a quick lunch at The Mall, Gadong. He approached me while I was eating my chicken joy. He introduced himself as a Filipino Scholar, now in Brunei to raise funds for other scholars.  He asked me in english and I answered him in tagalog, so he will instantly know that I am a Filipino as well. As he explained to me why he is in Brunei, I asked him, is your story true? He said, for me to help out, I can buy the pens that he is showings for a whopping $10 for 2 pens. That price is really high for pens, meaning 1 pen is almost Php200? With that story and with that price, who would believe him. So I asked more questions, where he is staying, how many are them in Brunei, how long are they staying; and he was able to answer all my questions. He even showed his ID and all. I asked him, who's idea is it to go to other countries just to roam around and beg people in the mall to buy their over priced pens. He said, it was the school director's idea. To which I answered, it is a stupid idea.

I told him to tell that director/ mentor that his strategy of begging people to pay for over priced pens in a foreign country is not only stupid but also degrading for the Filipinos.  There are thousands of Filipinos working here in Brunei and we are working very hard to get respect from locals and other nationalities. I am proud to say that Filipinos here are regarded as smart, hard working and very good with whatever job we are in. In fact, Filipinos are favored for all work positions, and compared to locals and other nationalities we are also one of the highest paid in this country. Simple because we are good in what we do and the employers  know, that even if they pay a little higher for a Filipino employee the money there are paying us is worth it. We are regarded the smartest and most reliable in any field of work here in Brunei. Some may even say, that Brunei cannot function well if Filipinos are not here, the palace itself has about 90% Filipino employees, that's how much respect they have on Filipinos when in comes to work.

So to see a Filipino, roam around the mall asking people to buy overpriced pens in simply ridiculous.  We have worked our as* off to show to everybody here that Filipinos are professionals, smart and very good in what we do, and as we show them that, we also gain respect from locals and other nationalities.
Seeing a Filipino "beg" for money is degrading and shameful. There are a lot of other means on how to raise funds, if the director/mentor has commonsense I am sure that there are a lot of other ways to raise funds.

Filipinos are intelligent and talented, something that we can showcase all over the world. Im sure if they have done their homework and coordinated with the right people they will get a lot of support from the Filipino community. If they coordinated with Philippine Embassy, I'm sure they can point them to the right direction.  They could have staged a show, I mean I would rather dance "tinikling" in front of a crowd rather than beg for money. If they only did their homework, I'm sure the whole Filipino community will be more than eager to help them out. They can get support from Expression Music which are mostly Filipinos, or some refreshments from Reyni's or Jollibee which is  known Filipino Restaurants. Even the children from SMS-IS are mostly Filipinos. This way we could have shown Brunei and the rest of the world (since there are a lot of other nationalities here) what "Bayanihan" is about. I am sure they could have raised more fund doing it this way, with so much pride, rather than going around the mall and begging for money.  Worse, if people would think that it is just a scam and they are trying to trick people into giving them money.