Yesterday was the official opening of the girls’ workshop at the Goducate Children’s Home in Prey Nob, Cambodia. The ceremony was attended by two personnel from Goducate HQ.
Two sewing machines donated by supporters from Singapore have been set up in the sewing room. Some of the girls will be trained in sewing. In the baking room, the girls had prepared delicious durian cupcakes the night before, and they showed off their decorating skills.
The Home has received orders for cakes from Rawlings Institute, a training school in Cambodia, and the girls will be able to bake regularly and draw a small income from the orders.
The ribbon cutting at the official opening of the girls workshop
The four of us Goducate workers sent to Vietnam to teach English are now also helping in a new project meant, among other things, to improve English communication skills. This project is the newly formed club of iCan International Education called iCan Productions. It is a video club designed for students and professionals who are interested in acting, video editing, and film-making and who have the desire to improve their English communication skills. The members meet every two weeks, on Saturday evenings..
At the first session, we started with an introduction about the video club and included some warm-up activities, ice breakers, and drama-skill activities related to self or body awareness. Then, we taught them pronunciation, followed by enunciation and conceptualization of the story. After the acting workshop, we taught them camera parts and usage and helped them to understand shutter speed, aperture, and white balance.
At the second session we reviewed most of the best acting activities we did during the previous session and added hands and face drama movements. Most of them were excellent in their group performance. Then, we taught them pronunciation and enunciation. Next, they were taught about how to structure a story for a movie based on The Hero’s Journey. Finally we taught them about camera angles and lighting.
The project will teach the members more than just film-making and English communication skills. Members will learn team-work and creativity, and will have fun letting their hair down in the process. They were also learn to compete, for there will be a film competition on Aug 9.
How to express basic emotionsHow to take good pictures using smart phones
Merianne is one of the Goducate teachers sent to help in Vietnam
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.
Helping Rommy harvest his vermicompostRommel and his family with the vermibeds
The guest writer is Melody, a community development worker based at GTC.
