Filipino businesses enjoy creative online support

Kiwis are using their skills to help out local Filipino businesses in innovative ways during Covid-19’s uncertain times, with one saying the gesture is rent he pays "for our room here on Earth".

Jason Curay used his IT and digital-marketing skills to create an online directory website, Mabuhay.co.nz, to help Filipinos “build a bridge between business owners and customers".

Meaning “Welcome”, Mabuhay gives businesses a platform to build their own page for the Filipino community to search via keywords.

Business owner Angel Apun said this type of online support is “crucial”, especially during this time where people are always online and they get a lot of “stimuli”.

“It helps us to be in front of them and not lose our market share which is really very important,” Ms Apun says.

Restaurants have suffered a five-week standstill due to the Covid-19 Level-4 lockdown in March as they were deemed non-essential for trade.

“To be really quite honest about it, we are really affected and I think it’s the same for all my colleagues and peers in the industry,” said Ms. Apun, of Luntian, a niche business focusing on Filipino-vegan cuisine pop-ups.

However, even as her business faces economic struggles, she sees the lockdown as an opportunity to “be really savvy and think outside of the box”.

Under Level 3,  local food businesses like hers have tried to find out how they can continue trade in a contactless way.

She said has been able to find support in the tools the Mabuhay website has to offer to promote her contactless services during this time.

These tools have seen an increase in her following on Instagram and Facebook from which “a certain percentage of those have converted into sales when we opened up stuff over the weekend", she said.

The site has also been able to expand it services to not only focuses on food businesses, but also Filipino-based organisations such as groups, communities and associations.

Online support for the Filipino community has also been prominent on Facebook, with groups such as “Pinoy Helping Pinoy’s” run by the Filipino Student Association, uniting the community virtually by providing information regarding COVID-19, food parcels, migrant information and more.

Ms Apun says this support and unity is only possible as Filipinos are ‘resilient’.