Guest * – Page 81 – Goducate … Go And Educate!

2011-02-282011-03-01

100 Literacy Centers in Sabah!!

Since the beginning of 2011, we’ve started another 5 new literacy centers in Sabah.

Considering that we took 2 years to start our first 7 centers, starting 5 centers in 2 months is quite an acceleration!

This prompted us to dream of having 100 centers in the northern part of Sabah as a very do-able dream. When our teachers (mostly mums in the respective villages) gathered for their regular Friday meeting last week, we threw this challenge to them and they embraced it with hearty agreement.

The major reason why we have managed to speed up our expansion is because communities are now embracing Goducate Literacy Centers as THEIR projects, rather than look at them as Goducate’s.

Community leaders and parents who have seen our centers have “spontaneously” started centers in their kampongs by offering their living-rooms as classrooms or even building school-houses. They are the ones pushing us to train them to teach their own children.

In the past, we had to think of which village to start our next project, we had to talk to the community, we had to look for suitable people in that village to train, we sometimes had to convince the men to build class-rooms, etc. This took time and resources and slowed the process.

photo(4) — Ali (in white T-shirt) and his daughter (blue T-shirt) and teenage teacher (in brown)

In these photos we see center #11, started by Ali. Ali built the school house on his own, The only thing that Goducate provided was the black-board. His daughter and a teenage neighbor have been trained to be the first teachers there. A supervisor from our first school (who was in the first batch of teachers we trained) travels there each afternoon to supervise the work. The school has functioned for 2 weeks and has 60 students.

There are hundreds of such villages with no schools for these undocumented aliens.

Therefore, the dream of a 100 Goducate Literacy Centers must be a reality!

2011-02-182011-02-18

A Reason for Hope

How much do you appreciate the art of music? Can you play an instrument? Can you even read sheet music? Did you ever think about how much impact music can have on someone’s life? As I visited Goducate centers in Laguna, I began to understand how important it is to get out of the cycle of poverty. How can people exit when their role models don’t know how to get out? Did you ever imagine that a recorder can give a child hope for a future?

The Goducate music program is only 10 months old—I got to see the impact it is beginning to have on lives in Laguna. Children proudly carried around their simple recorders, playing the songs they have memorized over and over. The children learn the basics of music with a recorder and after graduating from the recorder –knowing how to read music—they move on to more complex instruments like the flute or violin. Through various means, these children receive an instrument and learn to play it to the best of their ability.

LR-3823 — A house in the village from which boy playing the violin comes

A girl that I met, Lizel, is 20 years old– well on her way to becoming a successful young woman. Having nearly completed 3 years of college, I learned how she managed to even get into college. Her violin was her gateway to freedom. She earned a full ride to a local university by knowing how to play this instrument and participating in the school orchestra. She did not learn how to play the violin through Goducate but this is an example of the effect that music can have on a life. I met her family, I saw her home, I know that there is no way her parents could have supported her to go to university. In addition to studying she earns P400 an hour to teach others violin.

The dream for the Goducate music program is to see more children have a successful exit plan from the cycle of poverty. If they can become proficient with their instrument they can earn scholarships through this. The strategy is to have those who learn for free, go on to teach others for free. I saw young teens teaching younger children how to play recorders and violins. I watched as a girl who has been playing her flute for only 10 months, teach others how to play. A young boy from a very poor village was proudly learning how to play his violin from his mentors. Another boy played his cello as if he’s been learning all his life–even though he’d only been playing for 6 months. It was precious to watch these dear people help their own people gain skills, to begin to achieve dreams for a brighter future.

2011-02-162011-02-16

Learning to run youth camps in Batam

Last month 3 Americans from an established youth camp in America came to Batam to teach us how to run youth camps. The 3 Americans were accompanied by 3 Filipinos from Goducate Training Center in Iloilo, who are also experienced in running Goducate youth camps in the Philippines.

The 6 of them spent 4 days training 180 potential camp counselors, most of them school teachers. These teachers were chosen from schools that Goducate works with in Batam. The counselors were taught the philosophy behind youth camping (ie, how to use camp activities to teach life-principles and lifeskills), principles of counseling and how to run camp activities and games.

After the 4 days of training, 25 of the counselor-trainees were chosen to be counselors in our weekend camp. 75 campers (aged 15 to 16) from a local senior high school were selected to attend the camp. For almost all the students it was a first-time experience to attend such a camp. For the counselors it was an opportunity to put to practice what they had learned earlier that week.

It was such an unforgettable experience for the students and counselors, that every Saturday afternoon since the end of that camp about 30 of them have continued to gather together to meet for “mini-camps” – and continue to learn life-principles and life-skills as they play together!

Goducate hopes that the counselors and campers will soon be able to run camps for other groups of Indonesian youth.