Model Family Award

"Model Family Award" is a recording of the Philippines TV programme “Model OFW (Overseas Filipino Workers) Family of the Year Award”. Awards are given to Filipino families, some member of which works overseas.  This yearly contest is organized by the Philippine OWWA (Overseas Workers Welfare Administration) and is sponsored by global enterprises. 

" The Marcos Government created the Overseas Employment Programme (which was intended to be temporary), and which was meant to enable the post-colonial developing country to compete on a global liberal market. More than 8 million Fillipino citizens work abroad and their remittances sustain the economy and the Peso of their home country. This commodification of humans by labour export makes families fall apart - and become "imaginary": "Like the nation, which the scholar Benedict Anderson defined as an 'imagined community', the family too, I believe, survives mainly in the imagination of its members." (Randolf S. David, Nation, Self and Citizenship)

This is the starting point of the Model Family Award: Labour migration and global power relations have to be kept up for economic reasons, so this socio-political drawback has to be officially presented as positive. The contest is very present in the media and can be interpreted not only as a recognition of the hard working Overseas Filipino workers and their families, but also as an efficient and profit-oriented publicity campaign. The award is given for successful family relations oriented on so-called traditional values, and for entrepreneurial commitment."

(Katharina Garrelt)