Vi – Page 9 – Goducate … Go And Educate!

2013-09-272013-09-30

Goducate Sabah celebrates its 5th anniversary

About 5 years ago Goducate heard that in a corner of Sabah there were some 1 million undocumented aliens, and that because of their status, the children were not entitled to state education. The children thus grew up loitering around or getting into mischief, until they, especially the boys, were old enough to find work in the plantations.

These people were mainly from the southern Philippines, who had since the 1960s been going to Sabah to escape the civil strife at home. At that time Sabah’s then Chief Minister, who had family ties in the Philippines, gave the Filipinos asylum. So many people are stateless now because their passports have expired, or because they have entered by the “back door”.

During Goducate’s exploratory visit, we learnt the community was keen for the children to have some education. But how were we to provide education for so many children? When we found out that some of the mothers had had some education in the Philippines, the strategy became clear. We would teach the mothers to teach the kids.

In this way we have opened more than 30-40 centers over the 5 years. It’s a fluctuating population, with some centers having to close because the people have been forced out. At the moment there are 30 centers, staffed by 64 teachers and assistant teachers. The focus of teaching is on literacy and numeracy. Goducate sends a trainer over several times a year to upgrade the teachers. To help the children find jobs, training in livelihood skills such as manicure, sewing, and cooking have also been introduced.

Because of the unsanitary conditions in which these communities live, Goducate has also introduced a health program that includes hygiene and deworming. For adults there is a screening and education program on hypertension and diabetes. And for all, there is a nutrition program, with communities being encouraged to plant moringa, a plant that provides many nutrients.

Most of the older children who have gone through our centers are either working—in shops, restaurants, spas, and factories, or as assistant teachers in our centers. Some have enrolled in schools (either private, or, if they now have identification papers, state schools) after having caught up with their basic literacy and numeracy at our centers.

For the 5th anniversary celebrations, the teachers were brought together to share their experiences informally as well as formally (which gave them practice in public speaking), to show their performing skills, to clarify what they wanted to know during a question-and-answer session, to be thanked for what they have done, to be encouraged to continue their good work, and generally to enjoy themselves. For many it was their first time attending a function in a modern hotel, a far cry from the village life they lead.

2013-09-242013-09-24

Goducate teachers start work in Vietnam

Vietnam hopes to be an English-speaking nation by 2020. What that country lacks are teachers of English. When Goducate visited Danang, Vietnam’s third-largest city, in May this year, we had a request for a pilot batch of teachers to be sent over in September. In July, our Vietnamese partners visited the Goducate Training Center in Iloilo, to meet our trainees and staff, and to observe the kind of training offered at the Center. They reiterated their request for teachers in September.

We have thus been helping the trainees to understand Vietnamese culture, to learn a survival level of the Vietnamese language, and how to get about on motorbikes, which is the main means of transport in Vietnam.

Four teachers from Goducate are now in Danang. After a few days meeting their local co-workers and observing classes at a school, two have started teaching there. One is teaching in a language school, one will probably start at a nursery school, and two are being assigned to teach in hotels.

Our teachers now have been given an apartment, and are grateful for donations of various household items for their use. One family has also given them two bicycles—not motorcycles—which is very handy for getting to and from school and for grocery shopping, at least for three of them. The fourth has yet to learn to ride a bicycle, which is going to be daunting because, unlike the spaciousness and quiet of the Goducate Training Center, the streets in Danang are full of bicycles and motorcycles.

2013-05-032013-05-04

First batch of Goducate trainees ready for work in Indonesia

The first batch of Goducate community development workers to be trained at the Goducate Language Center in Batam has completed 6 months’ training in Bahasa Indonesia, the Indonesian language. To help the 8 trainees pick up conversational rather than formal Indonesian, part of their language training took the form of community work at an orphanage and in a poor village. The completion of their language training was marked by a “culmination” program at which the trainees were given a pep talk on what is expected of them when they go out to serve in the community, at which they demonstrated what they had learnt of Indonesian language and culture, and at which they received their certificates of completion of training. Two others, who did only part of the training, received certificates of attendance.

The community development workers will soon be on their way to their postings in different parts of
Indonesia. In fact, 2 have already started work. They have been in Medan for the past 3 weeks, teaching English.

The Goducate Language Center is open to students other than Goducate trainees. Since Goducate’s tag line is “helping the needy help themselves”, we believe that we ought to be helping ourselves be self-reliant. Hence the language center takes in paying students who want to learn either English or Bahasa Indonesia.