Unlike previous generations of overseas Filipino workers, today’s new breed of Filipinos expatriates end up in more white-collar jobs, with titles like software engineers, computer analysts, advertising executives, human resources managers and occupational therapists.
One young Filipina has carved a special niche for herself as a graphic designer in the United States while using the power of her designs as a tool for change back in her home country.
Manila-born but now Brooklyn-based Kara Bermejo has been working both ends of the spectrum, solving corporate identity and branding issues for high profile clients as well as doing noncommercial, impactful designs for social causes and nonprofit projects.
“I was always interested in the business side of things. What good is a design if it is not marketable? But most of all, it has to solve a problem or serve a need,” Bermejo said.
Bermejo earned both graphic design and business degrees from the Ateneo de Manila University. She completed her MFA in Design Entrepreneurship at the prestigious New York’s School of Visual Arts (SVA) in 2014, the first Filipino ever accepted in the program.
She worked as a senior designer in the New York firm Pure and Applied where did identity, graphic and exhibition designs for major New York cultural and civic institutions such as the New York Public Library and the Brooklyn Historical Society.
She now teaches at the Parsons’ School of Design Strategies while still maintaining her own design practice, Manifesto.ph, which she started in 2011.
In 2014, Bermejo co-founded MakeManila.org with architect William Ti of WTA Architecture and Design Studio, who was featured in the BusinessMirror Properties section in an article written by Rizal Raoul Reyes (The Art of Science, 07 October 2014).
MakeManila is a non-profit and online platform that facilitates public space improvement projects through community action and crowdfunding.
Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising contributions from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Kickstarter is one example and it is the world’s largest crowdfunding platform for creative projects.
In 2013, the crowdfunding industry grew to be over $5.1 billion worldwide, according to an HSBC study.
The crowdfunding model typically has three actors: the project initiator who proposes the idea or project to be funded; individuals or groups who support the project; and a moderating organization or the platform that brings the parties together, which is what Make Manila is.
“When I was working in Manila, in the middle of Edsa traffic, I would scribble down in a little notebook my observations and frustrations based on what I saw,” Bermejo said. “When I applied for the SVA MFA Design Program, I thought about expanding my role as a designer in a way that can somehow affect the kind of change that can make our city better.”
Bermejo said while there are no easy solutions the key definitely lies in the stakeholders themselves, “our public places and how we as a community can take matters in our own hands and take action.”
Make Manila “connects underserved urban communities to design teams in the planning and implementation of public space improvement, with the sponsorship of the private sector and online donors.”
The web-based platform seeks projects across Metro Manila’s 15 cities that bring “immediate feasible solutions to urban space challenges that make our city more beautiful, sustainable, functional, resilient, and available to all.”
This could be something as simple as building benches, plant boxes or roof panels, or something a bit more complicated like renovating a park or playground.
MakeManila’s pilot project was supposed to be the improvement of the E-11 Walkway in Greenhills San Juan.
“It was the perfect pilot project with just the right small scale to make efforts feasible. When the volunteer designers went to investigate, it had flooding problems, poor lighting, and all these safety concerns. They then developed simple architectural interventions to improve its conditions to about 2000 pedestrians that pass this walkway to work to Greenhills everyday,” Bermejo recalls.
“We were in the middle of applying for permits, submitting our proposal, stressing the need to renovate, and continuing our dialogue with the local baranggay until our plans were superseded by them. The baranggay already made some improvements of their own. It’s great to know that we can apply that kind of pressure to local government, and more often than not they actually do have the budget for it. It would be more impactful however to have community programming as well because that truly is what Make Manila is all about – community action,” she said.
Other MakeManila projects in the offing are the community playground in Balut, Tondo, Manila and the Mehan Gardens next to the Manila Metropolitan theater.
“All these places are in dire need of improvements and what MakeManila can provide is a platform for everyone to crowdsource ideas on how to improve their city,” Bermejo said. “This June we’re launching a new workshop in partnership once more with WTA focused on places within the walled city of Intramuros. Makemanila would love to have other partner architecture and design firms participate with us and conduct their own MakeManila workshops too. I’m in the middle of sending out invitations to select firms but I invite everyone to email us the public spaces you care about and how you would change it or why you would preserve it atmakeintramuros@makemanila.org. You can also propose them at makemanila.org.”
There are lots of projects all over our cities which are worth doing but never get done unless the citizens themselves do something about it.
Indeed, Make Manila is a genuine platform for the people to collaborate and generate ideas and projects to improve their communities.
This is Make Manila’s manifesto: “We believe in bringing the city back to its people—that a city is its people—and it is up to us to shape it, to elicit pride that we live in it, and to make it our home. I, you, we make Manila.”
Online funders of Make Manila can donate any amount and in kind (construction materials to be used) for the projects. They can join in the building of the project or propose the project themselves.
Corporations can seek Make Manila’s help for matching programs, public campaigns, employee engagement and other fundraising ideas tailored to their business market and brand.
Local governments can use Make Manila to do away with hired contractors’ expensive designs and projects that are paid out of the cities’ coffers. Indeed, if they want to do away with corruption and make the most out of their city improvement budgets, the Make Manila model of transparent fundraising and project building is the way to go.
In a world where more and more of the younger, affluent generation seem to be inclined to making their first million before they turn 30 and work overseas in order to do so, Bermejo has used her vast and varied talents as a communications designer for purpose-driven social enterprises intended to make communities better, including those in her own country.
By Ruben M. Cruz Jr. / Online editor