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Goducate Training Center (GTC) in Iloilo, The Philippines, has just begun its  eight month full-time training of its community development workers (CDWs). A good part of their training is in agriculture, because many of them will be working with poor rural or semi-urban communities where malnutrition is a endemic problem.

A key principle of GTC training is that it is practical and hands-on, so that our graduates can really be useful to the communities that they work with. And a key philosophy of Goducate is that we teach “Asians to help themselves.”

Therefore, our trainees will each be given a plot of land to grow food. The food that the trainees grow will, we hope, provide 90% of their food needs. The key performance index (KPI) for our agriculture consultant and trainees is that they collectively produce 90% of their total food consumption at the end of the year. In this year, our trainees will be first learning to “help themselves” before they go out to teach communities to “help themselves.”

On my recent trip to GTC, I will pleased to see the place turning into a large productive farm. The trees that we had planted two years ago are now beginning to bear fruit. The vegetable fields are filled with lush vegetables. The tilapia fish are multiplying.

GTC must be able to support its own faculty, staff and trainees with food, otherwise how can we tell poor farmers that they should support their own families?!

Helping Asians to help themselves, must first begin in GTC!

Goducate Training Center (GTC) in Iloilo, Philippines, is ready for its first intake of trainees. So far over 30 trainees have been interviewed and accepted for full-time training. Several more are presently undergoing their interviews to assess their suitability to be community development workers (CDWs) in poor Asian communities.

The trainees will undergo training in agriculture and other livelihood skills, teaching English, communication, and a host of other topics for the next 8 months. Much of their training will be “hands-on” training. For example, besides attending lectures on basic agriculture, they will have their own patch of land on which they will plant their a crop. The food that the students produce will be the food what they will be eating. In this way, they will first learn to help themselves before they go out to needy communities to help Asians help themselves.

Similarly, their ability to speak and teach English will be learned not only in the classroom but more importantly in their daily conversations with the other trainees. Trainees are allowed to use their own languages/dialects only in their dormitories. All lectures and discussions will be conducted in English and those who use their languages/dialects will be fined.

A good part of their training will involve actual community work with the neighboring communities, so that our graduates will be familiar with real-life community work. They will teach English to children in the neighboring schools. They will also teach home-based livelihood skills to ladies in the neighboring communities and agriculture to farmers the surrounding farms.

Most of the trainees are Filipinos, but trainees from China, Indonesia, and Cambodia are also included in our 2012 intake.

GTC hopes to produce CDWs who are passionate, committed and competent to help needy Asian communities to help themselves.

GTC hopes to be Asia’s best center for training CDWs.