Not long ago, our administrators at the Goducate Children’s Home in Cambodia reported that their tilapia fish ponds have taken off with lots of new fingerlings spawned within a short period of time.
It was thus with great anticipation that the Goducate representatives decided to try our hand at fishing when we visited the Home two weeks ago (20 to 23 July, 2011).
And we were not disappointed! Within 20 minutes, we managed to catch at least half a dozen medium sized tiliapia!
FishingGood catch!
Most of the hundreds of fishes are still in the ‘nursery’ stage. They will be full grown by year-end and will be ready for harvesting for sale at the local supermarket. Just another step for our Goducate Children’s Home to take in the process to become self-sufficient and for them to help themselves.
There are now 17 Goducate Literacy Centers in Sabah, serving about 2000 poor children who do not have the opportunity to attend school.
Children at these centers learn phonics (literacy) and numeracy. The unique feature of Goducate’s centers is that most of the teachers are mothers from their own communities, or former Goducate students who are now serving as teachers. Another unique feature is that most of the school buildings are built by the community.
The literacy and numeracy program has been very successful and most of our students are able to read phonetically – in English and Malay – after a few months. Goducate is now focusing on how to help our students to earn a livelihood.
As a start a few sewing machines were bought and young girls are taught how to sew. Their first project was to sew simple satchels (school bags) to carry their school books. These budding entrepreneurs bought cloth and sewed bags, which were then sold for 2 Malaysian Ringgit each – earning a healthy 1.5 Ringgit profit per bag!
7-year-old Goducate student who sews her own clothes
The recent visit by the ieatishootipost blogging community resulted in the donation of another sewing machine and a hemming-machine. These have come in time to sew dresses for the coming Muslim festival.
Goducate Training Center (GTC) in Iloilo, Philippines, is still being developed.
The basic facilities have been completed since April this year. The Multi-Purpose Hall with its gymnasium, offices, training rooms, dining facilities, and kitchen are now fully utilized for the training of our GTC trainees and for other groups (especially weekend youth groups).
The agricultural facilities of “greenhouse”, vermiculture beds, aquaculture pond and agricultural fields now serve as the laboratory for our GTC trainees — who have to undergo a compulsory basic agricultural course, so that they can help needy Asian rural communities.
Some recreational facilities (eg. dipping-pool, zip-line, restaurant, facilities for
horse-rides, etc) were also completed in April 2011. These recreational facilities are not only used by the youth campers but are also meant to help GTC earn revenue from organizations who will rent GTC for their corporate functions.
After the basic facilities were completed in April, GTC has been slowly adding facilities as funds are available. The unusually heavy rains this year have caused some erosion to the slopes of GTC and to the impounding lake, and hampered our construction works.
So far, the restaurant’s kitchen extension and the children’s playground have been successfully completed. The faculty housing and the ladies’ dormitories are still under construction. Additional drainage works are being added to prevent soil erosion. And as soon as the rainy season ends, the main camp roads will be “concretized”.
We hope to complete all these projects before the end of the year so that GTC can be ready for its 2012 intake of 100+ trainees, who will be trained to help needy Asians help themselves.
