One way by which Goducate is helping the victims of Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) that devastated large swathes of the Philippines in November 2013 is to provide temporary shelters for schools in north Panay that were damaged. North Panay is the area near the Goducate Training Center in Iloilo.
There are two approaches to providing these shelters. For classrooms that lost only their roofs, Goducate provides tarpaulins to serve as the roof. We call these “wrap-around tents”. The school teachers and parents put up bamboo and wooden rafters, and Goducate works with the locals to put up the 32×22 ft tarpaulins
When the walls and posts of roofless classrooms are structurally poor, as assessed by the engineering team from the Goducate Training Center in Iloilo, Goducate provides a “tent school”. The Goducate team has designed the tent schools to provide sufficient ventilation and insulation from the heat.
The Goducate team has been busy at the Goducate Training Center making these tent schools. We are fortunate to have people with the necessary skills to make these tent schools. When the Goducate Training Center was being built, we decided where possible to employ people from the neighboring villages and train them in various construction skills. One of them learnt welding and has since become a contractor for concrete and steel works. His team has been employed to help make the tent school. One tent frame can be made by 3 people in 4 days. The tarpaulin roof and wall are made by a separate team, so the manufacture of a complete tent is finished in 4 days. A tent takes 4 people 1 h to assemble.
Our target for phase 1 of our relief work is 25 units by the end of January. As of Jan 15, we had 5 full tents (which have been assembled on site) and 10 frames. Work will be speeded up in the coming week with more workers on the job.
We will soon be launching the Goducate Tent Schools with a teachers’ appreciation day to commend teachers for their hard work and resilience during the recent crisis.
