Posted on

Goducate Team in Indonesia Meets for Summit

The Goducate team in Indonesia met in Bandung Aug 22-25 for its 3rd biennial summit. The team is scattered in different parts of Indonesia—-Batam, Medan, Pekanbaru, Samosir, and Bandung. So the meeting was a chance for members of the team from various locations to share with others the work they are doing, the kind of progress they have made, the challenges they have faced, and their plans for the future. It was also a time for newer members to meet the older ones for the first time.

An important part of the programme was the discussion about how our work can be extended to other parts of Java. A sobering thought was how large the island of Java is. The team was thus challenged to think hard, and to plan well, about how they would go about ensuring that their plan to extend their work in Java can be carried out efficiently.

SYE leader presenting the team’s work

The meeting also had its lighter moments, with a skit, games, and a trip to explore parts of Bandung.

Games time at the summit
Writer is Vivien Choo, Director of Goducate Singapore
Posted on

Children at Goducate Children’s Home in Cambodia have artistic talent

This current lunar year is the year of the dog. When Goducate sponsor MHC Asia Group wanted to produce postcards as corporate gifts for its clients during the recent Chinese New Year, it asked the children at the Goducate Children’s Home in Cambodia to draw dogs.

MHC was spoilt for choice. They were offered 14 drawings by 11 artists. They chose 2.

Click to see the postcard

The artists range in age from 10 to 20. The school at the Home does not offer formal art training. However, a visitor to the Home had taught the children some basic principles of drawing — eg, how to gauge size and proportions. Amazing what the children have been able to produce with that little bit of training.

 

Posted on

Goducate workers from Philippines attend addiction-recovery training in Singapore

By Vi

After 5 days of leadership training (see blog May 5), Goducate workers from the Philippines stayed on in Singapore for 3 days for a workshop on addiction recovery. They were joined by 2 Singaporean Goducate volunteers.

 

Introducing criteria for addiction
Introducing criteria for addiction

The addiction-recovery training was not targeted at any particular type of addiction, though at the moment the focus in the Philippines is on drug addiction. Over there, the government under President Rodrigo Duterte has made it compulsory for drug addicts and pushers to surrender to the authorities.

The surrenderees report weekly to the police stations, and Goducate has been invited to help with the rehabilitation of these people in Laguna. There are some 68,000 surrenderees in this province. The Goducate team has been seeing 350-400 of them every week.

The training was conducted by Val Gonzales, an experienced counsellor in the USA and now dean of the School of Counselling at the Singapore Bible College. The Goducate team from Laguna learnt much about how to handle the drug surrenderees. One of their first jobs will be to recruit people to the team and pass on the skills they learnt to these new members.

Trainees with certificates of completion of workshop
Trainees with certificates of completion of workshop