Viral OFW video leaves viewers in tears

INQUIRER.net

 19share1445 1383

MANILA, Philippines—Raymond Marc tries to hold back tears as he watches a short video on YouTube. He failed.

“Coke has made me cry,” he posts on his Facebook account after watching the 4:27-minute “tearjerker” video of Coca-Cola that is now going viral on the internet.

His Facebook friend, Albert Madrigal, admits to being touched, too, by the short film.

“I cried. I could feel the message of the ad,” said Madrigal, a former University of the Philippines Los Baños professor who now works in Italy.

The video features three overseas Filipino workers: Joe Marie Ballon, Leonie Villanueva, Joey Doble.

Like many of the 11 million Filipinos trying their luck abroad, the three are hardworking OFWs who battle loneliness overseas to give their families back home a better life.

Ballon, an X-ray technologist, has been working overseas  for five years. And for him being away from his family is the most difficult part.

Leonie Villanueva

“I haven’t been home in a long time because my father got sick. He’s almost blind now,” says Ballon. “Instead of spending for the ticket home, I would rather send him money to buy medicine.”

Villanueva, a caregiver, has for nine years been fighting off the strong urge to fly back home and be with her children.

“I can’t go home, no matter how much I want to. I have house amortization bills to pay every month and all my children are depending on me,” she says.

“Even when I’m sick, I would force myself to go to work,” she adds.

Doble, meanwhile, left their family home in Pampanga when his youngest son was just one year old. That was  11 years ago.

“It can get very sad. I’m all alone here,” says Doble.

But Coke, through its Coca-Cola Where Will Happiness Strike Next: The OFW Project, gives the three a Christmas gift that left them in tears, but happy.