From the Philippine rice fields to a web developer for Swedish e-retailers
Just 7 years ago, Marche lived with her parents in a simple house on stilts in the rice fields of the southern Philippines. Today she works as a web developer for Swedish e-commerce companies.
A random visit completely changed the life of Marche. One day she visited her sister and her husband in Butuan on the troubled and war-torn island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines. They then had a visit from Manila by the brother-in-law's sister and her husband from Sweden. The Manila couple needed help taking care of their two sons when they had just started a business in Manila.
I just had to start working at McDonald's in Butuan and earned P150 / day (about 30 sek/day). They offered me higher pay as a nanny to their children in Manila. The salary itself was not decisive but I felt that there were greater chances in Manila than in Mindanao. After my mother had an interview with them, I was permitted to go with them to Manila to take care of the boys, says Marche.
Life in Manila was much more comfortable than out in the rice fields outside Butuan. She learned a lot by living with and caring for foreign children in an international environment. But Marche felt she wanted more in life and resigned to start working at a rice factory in a suburb of Manila instead. The couple took the dismissal very well and congratulated Marche on her new job.
It was an important experience. An experience to completely live on my own. I lived easier again but I learned a lot about life and developed a lot as a human being during this period, says Marche.
Marche then received a new job offer from the couple in Manila and now as an administrative assistant in the couple's company OnlineFactory, which works with outsourcing services for Swedish e-retailers. She accepted the new job offer and began a new challenge in life.
It was fantastic to suddenly start working in an office with lots of other people. Pretty soon I was also offered to start studying in addition to the work I have. I chose to study web development at the Philippines Women University in Manila. One of the better Universities in the country, Marche reveals.
Already in the first year of her education, Marche was offered a scholarship by the school due to her academic performance. Two years into the new education, Marche has started working with external customers for OnlineFactory, which are Swedish e-commerce companies. Marche says that she has had the privilege of being trained internally by two senior web developers. Both of them have almost 40 years of experience in advanced web development together from Swedish gaming companies. They also have lived both in Sweden and in Malta.
Daily, I now work with slightly simpler chores in WordPress and Woocommerce such as product layout and SEO tagging. I also work with image management, text editing, and publishing texts continuously in WP. I hope soon that I too will be able to start developing different applications in different programming languages. The customers are ultimately Swedish e-commerce companies that sell their products in a global market, says Marche.
OnlineFactory has previously focused on customer support, content-management, and micro influencers. The strategy is that after you find new skills at a good level, you develop your range of services. The long-term strategy is to be able to help Swedish companies with most of the processes needed to be able to succeed in the global market in e-commerce
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