Author: Leo

In January this year Goducate Laguna rented an area of 1 hectare to expand its vermiculture and fertilizer project to meet growing demand (see blog, Aug 5).

This expansion gave 6 Goducate scholars the opportunity to work for 2 months (May and June) to earn some money for the academic year that started in August. And at weekends other teenagers drop by for some part-time work. They are often taught how to plant vegetable seedlings, which they can take home to plant there, or to sell off.

 

We grow eggplant, bitter gourd, ladies’ fingers, corn, cucumber, peppers, papaya and string beans. We have also started to culture mushrooms.  We started with 1000 fruiting bags in May, and for the past 2 months we have been harvesting an average of 2-3kg / day. We are hoping to add 2000 more fruiting bags.

We hope to conduct educational tours at our farm, showing schoolchildren how to produce organic fertilizers and to grow organic vegetables. We also plan to teach them how to make use of every space available at home, whether by adopting horizontal or vertical farming as well as container farming.

The Goducate team in Laguna has been cultivating vermicompost as a means of generating income to help cover some expenses — for example, the maintenance and registration of vehicles. About a year ago, we were delighted to get an order for about 100 sacks of the compost from Batangas, the province next to Laguna. However, since then there was no such large order. Yet we were not discouraged. We continued producing the compost for sale locally.

Early last month we began to market the vermicompost online, and were pleasantly surprised to get an inquiry from a farm owner in Batangas. This man visited us and was impressed by the quality of  product, saying that it is better than that of other vermifarms in Laguna and Batangas. He ordered 30 sacks.

We have also been trying out a new machine, a vermiseparator, for harvesting the compost. We borrowed this machine, and found that harvesting with this machine is faster than harvesting manually.

 

Goducate Laguna launched a Health Information Drive for the community in February this year. We are helping the community by increasing their awareness of the threats and complications of diabetes, and hypertension and the benefits of Malunggay (Moringa olifera). Apart from free lectures on the topic, we also do weekly follow-up visits to check blood pressures and do some counselling.

From 2 community workers who were trained at the Goducate Training Center, Iloilo, Goducate Laguna now has 20 community leaders trained to give the lectures and to check blood pressure.

 

These community leaders are also part of the Goducate Scholarship program. They are now reaching their own villages to teach the community the value of health. We have been a partner to 5 barangays (villages) in Bay, Laguna, and hope to reach all 15 before the end of this year.