There is a particular ache that comes with loving a country from a distance. You feel it in the quiet hours after a long shift abroad, when you scroll through photos of home and wonder whether the money you send is actually changing anything, or whether it simply disappears into the same old problems. Alex Lacson wrote a book for exactly that feeling.
12 Little Things Global Filipinos Can Do to Help Our Philippines is not a lecture on politics or economics. It reads more like a letter from a friend who believes, gently and stubbornly, that ordinary Filipinos hold far more power to shape their nation than they have been led to think. Lacson first became known for an earlier book written for Filipinos back home. This one turns to the millions scattered across the world, the nurses in London, the seafarers in the Gulf, the caregivers in Hong Kong, the engineers in Canada, and tells them something they rarely hear: overseas Filipinos, he insists, are among the true builders of the nation.
The book is organized around twelve simple ideas, and what makes them land is how modest each one feels. Lacson does not ask anyone to save the country in a single heroic act. He asks them to do small, doable things, done faithfully.
Take the very first chapter, about helping family back home. Most overseas workers already send money, so you might expect Lacson to praise them and move on. Instead he offers a gentle challenge. Sending cash every month, he suggests, can quietly build a culture of dependence rather than one of hard work and initiative. So he proposes changing not the amount but the manner of giving. Fund a scholarship for a niece or nephew, but tie it to grades and effort, so the gift teaches diligence along the way. It is the kind of advice that stays with you, because it reframes something you already do.
From there the ideas widen outward like ripples. He suggests helping create a livelihood for even one Filipino family, helping build a home for a family that has none, and putting up a single classroom, library, or toilet in a school that lacks one. He encourages readers to adopt a scholar, to support good governance so the country can finally have the leaders it deserves, and to care for the environment wherever in the world they happen to be. He invites them to spend a vacation in the Philippines, to speak well of their people and become ambassadors of the Filipino, to buy Filipino products and champion Filipino talent, to invest in the country, and finally to help unite the global Filipino community, so that all these small efforts add up to something far larger than any one person could manage alone.
What gives the book its warmth is Lacson's belief that loving your country is a form of stewardship, a way of caring for something you were entrusted with rather than something you merely happened to be born into. Woven through the pages is his short creed that begins, simply, "I am Filipino," written for children and adults alike as a reminder that there is greatness in being part of this people.
You do not have to agree with every idea to feel the pull of the book's central invitation. Read a chapter on a quiet evening and you may find yourself thinking of one small thing you could actually start this month. Maybe that is the point. A country is rebuilt less by grand gestures from a few than by many hands, each doing a little, faithfully, over the years.
If you are a Filipino living far from home and you have ever wondered whether your distance makes you less able to help, this slim and sincere book offers a kinder answer. It suggests that the miles between you and the islands are not a wall but a bridge, and that the little things you choose to do from wherever you are can travel all the way back to shore.
It is worth an afternoon of your time. And it might just change how you send your next paycheck home.
By June Carlo Catulong