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Goducate starts life-guard training in Laguna

Goducate aims to help Asians help themselves. In Laguna, Philippines, we’ve imparted livelihood skills to help many people there. Many ladies are now supplementing household income by producing soap, dish-washing detergent, fabric conditioner, and perfumes for sale to their communities. Many young people have been trained to teach music and the money they earn by giving music lessons helps fund their own schooling or music lessons. Recently, many men have been trained to be basketball referees or table officials so that they can earn money by officiating at basketball competitions.

Last week I was there to watch the kickoff of another livelihood training program, namely, training young men to be life-guards and do swimming-pool maintenance. Laguna is known as the “Resort Capital of the Philippines” because of its proximity to Manila and the presence of many hot-spring resorts there. Most of these resorts have swimming pools. Philippines’ law requires the presence of life-guards at all public pools.

A licensed life-guard and well-known swimming coach from Manila, Jojo
Rivera, who is also a basketball coach who has helped in our basketball program, volunteered to teach our young men life-guard skills. Eight men were selected to undergo an introductory course in life-guard skills. The two-hour introductory course conducted in the Goducate Model Farm was followed by another two hours of practical life-saving in a nearby swimming pool.

Coach Jojo lectures on the basics of life-saving
Coach Jojo demonstrates the art of saving a child

We hope that some of these eight men will be found to be suitable to undergo further training so that they can be certified life-guards and to be competent at maintaining swimming pools.

"This is how you save a drowning man!"

Goducate hopes that this will be another means to help Asians help themselves

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Goducate Expands Student Activity Center in China

Since 2009, Lifepegs, Goducate’s international lifeskill-based activity center for young adults in a city in Northeast China, has:

– maintained relationship with current 1700 active members;
– hosted total of 7 four-week English Summer camps;
– organized more than 600 activities reaching out to more than 8000 young adults;
– started on-campus-societies in 6 universities.

The center is geared towards providing members with essential life skills education, unique opportunities for healthy relationships, and new and exciting recreation.

Students who could be served by new Goducate's new activity centers in the south
One of universities in the catchment area for Goducate's new activity centers.

Every activity from rock wall climbing to learning about financial management to traveling to a distant city is meant to teach a life skill as well as provide some new and exciting experiences whilst they get to know each other and find a lasting and enthusiastic group of friends.

Members are also invited to take part in a leadership training program which evaluates the development of their leadership skills and presents them with opportunities to lead activities. Some of these trained leaders believed in the philosophy and dreamt about setting up more Student Activity Centres in other parts of China. And, their dream has indeed come true!

Right now, as you are reading this article, two core teams of 6 native workers trained by Goducate are working hard to set up two Student Activity Centres in southern China. These new centres aim to help more than 60,000-70,000 students from 8 universities in one city, and in another, 50000+ students from 3 major universities.

Goducate has achieved its mission of helping these young adults in China to help themselves as they seize the opportunities to acquire life skills and an education that goes far beyond their university or their individual abilities.

Moreover, they are now transferring what they have learnt and passed on to their fellow folks a set of adventures that they can truly hang their lives on!

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Goducate’s integrated rice-fish cultivation needs fine-tuning

Goducate Training Center (GTC) in Iloilo, Philippines, trains community development workers (CDWs) for Asia. Since most needy Asian communities are rural agricultural communities, a large part of GTC is devoted to  agriculture. Several new farming technologies are tested in GTC. Such testing provides the trainees with hands-on farming experience and develops in them the spirit of creativity and inquiry. One of the new farming methods in GTC is integrated rice-fish cultivation.

GTC’s rice-fields have consistently produced organic, high-yielding, high-quality rice three times per year. This rice should be sufficient to feed over 100 full-time trainees and staff throughout the year. Late last year, 2 plots of rice were “re-engineered” to cultivate both rice and fish. Instead of growing rice on the entire plot, the rim of  the plot was dug out for fish cultivation. Tilapia and cat-fish fingerlings were put into the water.

The fish eat the insects that gather at the base of the rice stalks and the droppings of the fish fertilize the rice. This is important because GTC rice is produced without the use of insecticides and pesticides. The sale-price of fish is several times higher than that of rice and therefore raises the productivity of the plot.

This month we harvested the fish from one of the plots of rice. The harvest of tilapias and catfish were only 80 g (below the 100-plus kg that we had expected), and the size of many of the fish were below marketable size.

Obviously, there is much fine-tuning to do before we can confidently promote this form of farming to needy farmers to help them help themselves.

 

Having fun before the harvest (note the rim of water around the rice-field)
Harvested tilapias