One way by which Goducate plans to help needy Filipinos help themselves is to promote vermiculture among these people. They can then either use the organic fertilizer thus produced by the African night crawler worms for their own crops, or they can sell the fertilizer. When we brought the neighboring villagers to the Goducate Training Center to learn about vermiculture, the uptake was poor. So we decided to go into the community to teach them on site, and the uptake has been encouraging.
The vermiculture program in the areas neighboring the Goducate Training Center in San Miguel, Iloilo, was started in October 2013 One household per “sitio” (an area within a barangay [village], usually far from the barangay center) is given ¼ kg of worms and taught in its own backyard how to culture these worms. When the worms have multiplied, that household gives 1 kg to another household in the sitio. So far, 12 households in 7 sitios around GTC have been producing vermicompost through the Goducate program.
The first person to have a vermibed in his own backyard was Rommy, a farmer in Sitio Sapa, Barangay San Antonio. Previously he spent a considerable sum on commercial fertilizers. So far he has harvested 275 kg in 5 months from January to May 2014 . He uses the compost on his own vegetables, and now spends only a small amount on commercial fertilizer.
One of our more successful vermicompost producers is Rommel from Barangay Sto Angel, who started on the program in January this year. Rommel, a farmer, taught his children how to take care of the worms while he is busy at work. The vermibeds need to be checked frequently to ensure that there is enough moisture and enough substrate (usually dung and rice hay, rice stalks, madre de cacao leaves, ipil-ipil leaves, banana trunks and common grasses, which are rich in nitrogen) for the worms to work on. Within 2 months his ¼ kg of worms had become 5 kg, and he was able to harvest 12 sacks (1 sack = 40 to 50 kg) of compost in 3 months. He uses the compost for his own vegetables and sells some of it. With the profit he was able to buy clothes for his children. He gave a portion of his worms to his nephew.
The guest writer is Melody, a community development worker based at GTC.