Raising the performance bars for OPA

Edwina Lema Beech moves with the poise and the grace of a dancer, which she was in her younger years. "She was a member of the FEU International Dance Company before moving on to perform in international productions such as Steve Parker Productions in Las Vegas and Axio Production in Athens, Greece. "I understand completely the discipline required of dancers," she added. Indeed, she must, and this youthful familiarity with the demands of practice bars in dance studios and performances no doubt continues to help her in her present role.

Edwina is a respected name among licensed land-based recruitment companies. Her company, Mabuhay Personnel and Management Services, Inc. was founded in 1978, in an era which saw a global growth of industries and the beginning of recruitment of Filipinos particularly for construction. Mabuhay has since deployed more than 2,000 Filipinos in the Middle East, Lebanon, Spain, Japan, the USA, Guam and Singapore. She is the chair of the Philippine Association of Services Exporters Inc. (PASEI), which has a membership base of 500 recruitment agencies. She has also chaired since 1997 the Philippine Entertainment Exporters & Promoters Association (PEEPA), which has a membership base of around 100 agencies, and was president of the Philippine Chamber of Industries in Music and Entertainment from 1994 to 1995. She is a member of other organizations, notably among them the Rotary Club.

Her company serves the needs of global industries requiring professional, creative, customer friendly and highly motivated Filipino executives and staff at all organizational levels. "Our company excels in hotel openings and I have supplied personnel for prestigious hotels in the Middle East," Edwina says. Mabuhay Personnel specializes in pre-opening recruitments for newly-opened hotels, resorts, hypermarkets, and telecommunication companies abroad. Her clients include five-star hotels and resorts as well as globally-recognized corporate organizations in the Middle East and in Asia. Edwina also sends overseas performing artists to Japan and other countries requiring them.

"For so many years, my performers have also opened variety shows like That’s Entertainment on local television and delivered revue performances," she continued. "The Philippines has established a reliable reputation in many fields, including the performing arts," she adds.

Edwina’s outfit is among those who regularly send dancers and singers to Japan and she has built studios for the training classes. As in other reputable outfits, her talents sweat out in a warm-up exercises before dance bars, marshaled by dance masters. In another area, a voice coach patiently performs the same task. There are also dormitories for these women, as they train and wait for contracts and visas to be processed. "In time, when they have built up their Artists’ Record Books, or ARBs, they will have established a trail of their careers. The ARB system is one of those mechanisms by which talents are identified as legitimate or not. That is why our organizations, like the PEEPA, protest loudly when we hear of an ARB being sold by unscrupulous people. The undocumented or spuriously documented OPAs destroy the reputation of legitimate Filipino entertainment industry workers," she says.