Category: Malaysia

Goducate Sabah celebrated its 7th anniversary in Sabah last month. The work there is a good example of how Goducate fulfils its mission of helping the needy to help themselves. The population served consists mostly of undocumented aliens who are not entitled to state education. It has meant that children used to loiter around, sometimes getting into trouble. What Goducate does there is to train the mothers to teach the children. Goducate trainers go over periodically to upgrade the teachers.

The people live in remote primitive villages, and the environment has been made particularly difficult in the past couple of years because of the intensified security searches. So the anniversary celebration was an opportunity to thank all those teachers who have perservered in giving the children a chance at some form of schooling. Most of the schoolrooms are makeshift ones, in people’s homes.

For the teachers the anniversary was a chance for them to testify how they have been inspired by the challenges they have had to face, and how they have discovered their own potentials. From being housewives or menial laborers in markets, they have learnt to teach literacy and numeracy, to help children build their characters, to build relationships with others in the village, and to cope with the difficult environment they face. One young teacher said, “Goducate did not teach us to learn but they teach us hope”.

The anniversary program was enlivened by various presentations by students and teachers—ranging from declamations, recitation of poems, to song and dance performances.

Many of the students who have been through the Goducate learning centers in Sabah have found jobs, some as assistant teachers in our learning centers, and one is now a university student (see blog Oct 2, 2015). Goducate is hoping to give many others from this community the opportunity to get a tertiary education.

*Our guest writer is Joy de Pallo

About 6 years ago Goducate started literacy centers in Sabah to cater to the numerous undocumented aliens of Filipino origin who are not entitled to state education. Over the years a few thousand children have learnt literacy and numeracy and some livelihood skills at these centers, and many have been able to get jobs in places such as restaurants, retail outlets, hairdressing saloons.

Some have stayed on as assistant teachers at the literacy centers, and some wish to continue with their schooling. So this year Goducate took on the challenge of bringing to the Goducate Training Center (GTC) in Iloilo 9 of the teens who have been working as assistant teachers. Here they are being taken through the Philippines Department of Education Alternative Learning System (ALS). It is a ladderized, modular, non-formal education program for people who have not completed their schooling. Goducate has been tutoring out-of-school youths and adults in ALS in its community programs. Those who successfully complete the secondary level of the ALS are eligible to apply for tertiary education.

The aim of bringing the Sabah teens to GTC is not only to enable them to finish their academic schooling, but also to train them to help their own communities when they return to Sabah. Hence, they are also undergoing parts of the training to be community development workers that the rest of the trainees at GTC are going through. The teens’ curriculum focuses on the learning of communication skills, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills. They are taught how to make use of the resources they have, how to develop oneself, and how to expand one’s vision. After all, poverty is not merely the result of external factors, but also of the state of the mind. The Sabah teens have classroom training that is separate from the rest of the trainees, but they join the others in the community work in the areas around GTC, in some of which the effects of Typhoon Haiyan are still being felt.

After a few weeks at GTC, the Sabah teens have become confident in speaking English, and they have also picked up the Filipino language. They have opened up and shared about their dreams and what they want to be in the future. Through mingling with the other trainees they have learnt new skills such as photography, cooking, playing a new kind of sport, and also important lifeskills such as doing their own laundry and keeping their own place clean. Their talents are beginning to show through.

Goducate hopes that when they return to Sabah these 9 teens will be an encouragement to others in their community, who will see that that if they dream big and work hard there is a good chance they can bring themselves and their communities out of poverty.

Goducate centres in Sabah observed Nutrition Month from April 7 to April 30. A school day in short, so students go home for meals, but during that Nutrition Month, students at each of the 22 schoolhouses were given a meal in school on one of the days.

Apart from the literacy program, Goducate has been promoting health in the communities in Sabah. There is a regular de-worming programme, basic health screening (because most of the people there are not entitled to treatment at state facilities), and an effort to get the community to grow and eat moringa, a plant with many nutrients.

Some of the mothers helped to prepare the meal for the feeding programme. The meal consisted of rice porridge with chicken and moringa. This was an opportunity for reinforcing to the mothers the importance of nutrition for the children, and the relation between health and school performance.