Sue – Goducate … Go And Educate!

2014-05-302014-06-03

Goducate holds first graduation ceremony for students of Happy Happy English

May 24th marked the end of our first 12-week term for Happy Happy English (HHE) at a dormitory for foreign workers. To commemorate this occasion, we held a graduation ceremony for the students.

Goducate started a program called HHE earlier this year after a riot in Little India late last year led to the restriction of foreign workers to that area. We started providing conversational English classes in a fun and unconventional way in the dormitory, focusing on building confidence in our students and making learning fun. There were three levels of classes. Over the 12-week program, we focused on workplace English, how to speak to supervisors, asking for directions, and talking about themselves and their families, among other things.

The graduation ceremony was preceded by a volleyball tournament between the dormitory workers and players from Goducate’s Connectayo program, a program for getting to know Filipino foreign workers through sport. The dormitory team thrashed the visiting team. We later found out that the dormitory had an Indian state player and a volleyball coach in their team!

The graduation ceremony was a chance for the students to showcase their talents in song, dance, and in a skit. They sang in their mother tongues as well as in English. The skit incorporated topics taught over the past 12 weeks. The students also performed a choreographed dance item. Some students also spoke, in video clips, or live, about what they had learned and achieved through this program. One from India described HHE as a “life-achievement program” where one can learn new things and feel good about them. The proudest moment for each of the students and for the teachers was when each student was called up on stage to receive the certificate.

After all the formalities, we had a time of dinner and catching up with the students. A young worker from Bangladesh told one of our teachers that this was the most memorable moment in his life so far.

Goducate is currently running HHE in 2 dormitories, each housing thousands of workers. We plan to start our program in a third dormitory soon.

"Happy Happy English is a life-achievement program" — “Happy Happy English is a life-achievement program”

2013-12-242013-12-26

Goducate’s Sing Your English program is well received in Cambodia

Goducate has been developing a Sing Your English (SYE) program to teach English to children in Indonesia. To test whether the program would be well received in countries where English is hardly heard, we took it to Myanmar in November, where we found that the children (and even their parents) took to the songs, and were soon able to sing them without accompanying music.

As a further test, early this month we tried it out in Cambodia. A group of Singaporeans who went to the Goducate Children’s Home for the opening of the new boys’ dorm brought the program to two of the villages where staff and the older children from the Home go to teach English.

For the children in the villages, the program was entirely different from the conventional type of classes they attend in school. SYE is conducted in a way that allows children to have fun while learning English, and without the stress of having to sit tests and do homework. Accompanying the songs were actions, games, and also prizes. The children enjoyed themselves and could be heard singing on their way home.

Not only that, but a dental team from Singapore that visited the Home and the villages a couple of weeks later found the village kids still singing the songs.

Students in village school learning SYE song

2013-11-262013-11-27

Goducate teaches English in Myanmar

Goducate has a Children’s Home in Yangon, Myanmar. The 12 children there come from very poor families and have lost one or both parents, either through death or remarriage. The children attend state schools, where English is not taught. They learn English at the Home, where they also receive help in catching up with their schoolwork if necessary. Knowing English would be a plus-point for them when the time comes for them to be looking for a job..

Goducate also teaches English to the children in four villages in Myanmar. Our workers in Myanmar visit these villages and teach them English through songs and stories.
I went along with a small team from Singapore last week to introduce our Sing Your English (SYE) program to the children Goducate serves in Myanmar. We found that some of the children in the villages do not go to school because they are too poor. In one village we were told that these children were instead working in bottle-washing factories, where the washing is done by hand.

Learning English at the Children's Home — Learning English at the Children’s Home

Learning a song in English in the village