Last week, the Goducate Children’s Home in Cambodia held an opening ceremony for the newly built boys’ dormitory. The old dormitory was getting too crowded for the 24 boys in the Home plus the male staff. The new building consists of one large bedroom, a guestroom, and a bathroom with three toilets and showers.
The new dormitory was built to a large extent by the older boys in the Home as part of their vocational training. It is not fully furnished yet. The boys are still building the cabinets, which is giving them much practice in welding.
The new building was sponsored by a church in Singapore, and the official opening was timed to coincide with a visit from some of its members. After the ribbon was cut, some of the children performed music pieces and sang for the guests.
Musicians preparing to play at opening ceremonyCutting of ribbonDorm cabinets under construction
The communities that Goducate serves in Sabah live in very poor and unsanitary surroundings, so one aspect of Goducate work there is health education, with a strong emphasis on hygiene. In addition there is a regular deworming program for the students.
To reinforce the hygiene program, and to teach about environmental friendliness, a Clean and Green competition was organized for the learning centers. The objectives of the competition were to reinforce learning about cleanliness and a healthy environment by:
Maintaining cleanliness of the learning centers and beautifying them with plants
Putting up informational bulletins in the learning centers about various aspects of personal and environmental health Encouraging team work and team building in keeping the learning centers clean, and Inspiring the children to maintain and beautify their own surroundings.
21 number of learning centers took part in the competition, which lasted through September and October 2013. Teachers, students, and parents participated in the cleaning and greening effort. Judging started from the third week of September to the end of October 2013, with the results being announced on Oct 31.
I was in the Philippines from Nov 23 to 29 to see the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda). I visited North Panay, Leyte and Samar. I’ve seen poverty and suffering in many different countries over the past 30 years but I was unprepared for what I saw on this trip. For mile upon mile it looked like a super large truck had run over entire communities, farm, and the whole countryside.
Thankfully, the food situation has improved greatly thanks to humanitarian efforts of nations and charity organizations. I believe that most communities (including remote ones) have enough food at this time. However, I believe that this food supply will slowly run down as relief organizations start pulling out at the end of this year and will “dry up” in about 6 months’ time when the relief work will be handed over to the Philippines government.
As I saw the great needs, I realized that Goducate had to focus on its core-strengths of education. I saw dozens of damaged schools with roofs that had blown off. In the undamaged sections of these schools, lived many refugees who had lost their homes.
The Department of Education has declared that schools should re-open for classes. There is good intention behind this order to resume classes but in reality how can classes be conducted in roofless classrooms, or rooms occupied by refugees? No-one seemed to have an answer to this simple question!
So we decided to start Goducate Tent Schools to meet this need. Goducate’s engineering team has designed large tents that are suitable as classrooms. These will be set up in school compounds (in cooperation with the local educational authorities). If the regular teachers are still reporting for duty, then they will be the ones to teach in these tents. If not, Goducate community development workers (CDWs) will serve as relief-teachers. In addition to regular classes, our CDWs will conduct classes on agriculture, carpentry, and public health.
Goducate will provide planting materials for root-crops and vegetables, as well as the worms (African Night Crawlers) used to produce vermicompost (an organic fertilizer). Many of the affected communities are coastal fishing communities with no culture of growing food. Our CDWs will thus teach mothers and students how to produce fertilizers and how to grow vegetables.
Goducate will provide chain-saws and other tools to clear fallen trees and produce lumber from them. Our CDWs will teach carpentry skills to men and teenage male students so that they can rebuild their own houses with help from us (eg, in the form of nails and roofing materials).
Our CDWs will also teach mothers and teenage female students public health to prevent the onset of communicable diseases from mosquitos and dirty water.
In other words, Goducate Tent Schools will be both regular school classrooms and a community classrooms for relevant survival skills.
Goducate is in the process of sealing a partnership with Water Missions International to provide clean drinking water to communities.
I hope that with this project Goducate will help the helpless help themselves and that these will then move on to help others to help themselves.
Damaged schoolhouseDamaged community clinicDesign of Goducate Tent School
