Inability to help others can feel overwhelmingly difficult for people who made it a mission to alleviate the suffering of others. Their empathy is such that they feel particularly drawn to people who’ve had more than their fair share of troubles in life, things that can only be understood by someone who has experienced the same pains in the past.

This rings true for Arvin Peralta, an inspector for the global welfare group, International Transport Workers Federation (ITF). As a former seafarer, Peralta knew the hardships and the occasional injustices done to sea-going transport workers. These issues were the same concerns brought to him mostly by Filipino seafarers.