Carla Earnest’s journey started in a sugar cane town

As a child, Carla Earnest never imagined she would leave the Philippines.

She grew up in an idyllic rural agricultural setting on the island of Negros. She and her parents and her three siblings shared a two-bedroom, tin-roofed wooden house with a large garden and enough space to raise pigs, chickens, ducks and goats for the local markets.

Negros was coast to coast sugar cane fields, all feeding Asia’s largest sugar cane mill and refinery…