Emmanuel M. Villafuerte, Jr. – Social Media Manager

Life is a never ending fight for survival. Even when I was a kid my parents told me that life won’t give you things that you want or need so easily, you have to fight for it.

My name is Emmanuel and I’m a person who has been through a lot of struggles in life. I’m the 3rd child in four siblings. Naturally the middle child always has the less favours. I am an Information Technologist and I’m really good at fixing computers. Even though I graduated in a local college and literally learned nothing there, I actually got better simply because of my determination to succeed. There was a time in college that I was assigned to fix and set up computers in our computer lab for the students, I guess the college never had any budget for a professional technician. The college never gave me anything but I was fine with it. Especially after that, I felt like a bad ass. For the first time in my life I felt like I was Rocky Balboa!

College days passed and as soon as I graduated, I was forced to look for a job right away. Unlike some rich kids here that after graduation they can sit back and relax, have a vacation and look for a job when they are ready, mine was actually quite the opposite. Three days after I got out of school, I went out to the world in search of a career. I landed a job in a call center. I was assigned in an Australian telecommunications company.

For a first job it wasn’t so frightening or challenging like some would say. In fact, I was happy I felt like trouble shooting and explaining customer’s bills was my thing. “MR. CSAT” (customer satisfaction) that’s what people call me. An average person would get 2 or 3 returns a day but mine would be 10-15. Everyone was so impressed that a newbie doing that much was amazing. I got tons of rewards, always being mentioned and given special treatments. There were times when during my lunch time, my food was free of charge.

I met my wife at that same company. We were dating back then and I thought life couldn’t be more complete. I told myself that I couldn’t get any happier than where I was.

Everything was doing so well until the day that I met an accident. I was in a rush to get to my girlfriend (who is now my wife). I was away for 2 days and started to miss her so I got excited not realising I was going too fast and hit a car breaking my leg. I was brought to the worst hospital in the region where nurses and doctors don’t care about you if you don’t have the money.

‘Lucky man’ is what I can call myself. My girlfriend got me transferred to a decent hospital and my company payed for my operation, but the struggle didn’t stop there. Depression got me. I couldn’t accept that I couldn’t go to work. The only thing that I’m really proud of, I was asking myself “why was I given a chance to live?”, when I was living miserably at that moment. The answer was there all along, I was surviving for the love of my life. We got matching tattoos, even though I was still in a wheelchair!

Months passed and I got back to work in a call center. I was working for an American Telecommunications company where I was still doing troubleshooting and bills. The second time I got to a BPO, I reigned supreme and was called the agent of the year. I almost got sent to the USA for a trip and an award ceremony but sadly I wasn’t able to get a VISA.

It’s like what everyone was telling me always “traveling abroad is for the wealthy”. Back then I thought getting a tattoo was the coolest thing until I came across home-based jobs – where you work with the best environment there is… “at home”.

For a copy of Emmanuel’s resume please click here.