This paper examines my engaement with the overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in Hong Kong while I was a United Board Fellow at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Using key informant interviews and participation-observation, I wrote and published several articles, both in a professional journal and in popular media, about the OFWs' cultural activities and performances which helped to amplify their identity as talented and skillful people, away from their stereotype as ordinary domestic helpers in Hong Kong. Was I practicing public anthropology? Based on the related literature I propose a hierarchy of public engagements which includes the following: providing information and awareness-raising, designing programs and projects, implementing programs and projects, contributing to policy making, advocating certain modalities, and resorting to activism. I consider myself to be at the base of this hierarchy of public engagement and I was not able to go beyond it. I experienced both contextual and institutional barriers in pursuing further my engagement with the OFWs particularly on political and economic issues.
