Author: Leo

Work has started on the building of the Goducate music learning center in Talahiban. On the first day Goducate staff and local volunteers helped to transport the materials needed to the site.

We hope it won’t be long before the present 23 music students in Talahiban will be able to be have their lessons in the center. Meanwhile they continue enthusiastically learning music outdoors, even when darkness has started to fall.

The 23 students will be joined by others as enrolment of new ones continues.

The Goducate veg@table project in Dayap had to be put on hold soon after it was initiated because of the dry spell over the past few months. With the installation of the first Goducate hand pump in this village, we hope the project will take off again.

The villagers get their water from hand pumps, but they were too few and far between.

The pump we have installed will serve 22 families. We hope to be able to provide a few more pumps. Each pump goes down 40 feet.

13-year-old Matthew Mendoza, a Goducate Orchestra violinist, has received a pleasant surprise at the Mabakan Learning Center, where he teaches the violin to some other children. The mothers of those children there have pooled together to give him 50 peso ($1) an hour for the lessons he gives every Saturday afternoon. The idea is that this money will go towards his studies.

Matthew, who began to learn the violin just over a year ago, is one of the 5 musicians selected during the making of the Channel News Asia program Once Upon a Village to go to Singapore for further training later this year.

His violin students, too, are teachers. They teach other children to play the recorder. All this is in keeping with Goducate philosophy of helping the needy to help themselves—and to help others.