Learning Centers – Page 22 – Goducate … Go And Educate!

2010-09-242010-09-23

Visible progress of Goducate’s Literacy Centers in Sabah, Malaysia

The 15 visitors from the blogging communities of ieatishootipost and Nuffnang were given a first-hand view of the progress of Goducate’s 2 year old literacy program in Sabah, Malaysia.

When they visited Goducate’s newest literacy center (barely 2 months old) they saw only 40 students learning their ABC’s in a little “porch” over a swamp. In this community of over a 1000 people, we were told by the village-head who had lived there for 25 years, that this was the first “school” in that community.

When they visited another literacy center that had functioned for 6 months, they witnessed a concert performed by over 150 students. The students of this school performed a little “concert” for us (some standing in the swampy mud) presenting items in halting English.

When they visited a center that had functioned for a year, they witnessed classes in arithmetic and English conducted in neat classrooms. The students in this center were confidently answering their teachers’ questions.

When they visited the first literacy center that Goducate started 2 years ago, they saw a nice school house with 400 students and were entertained by children speaking confidently in English.

Concert at Goducate's first literacy center in Sabah

It was a real pleasure to see how these centers had progressed through the efforts of their teachers – most of whom are mothers whom Goducate has trained.

Goducate believes that mothers make the best teachers.

Goducate believes that every mother wants to see her children learn and grow.

Goducate wants to empower mothers by training them to help their own children.

Goducate helps needy Asians help themselves.

2010-09-222010-09-23

Food-blogging community visits poor children in Sabah, Malaysia

Last week, Dr Leslie Tay, the well-known Singapore food-blogger who started the ieatishootipost.sg food-blog led a team of 11 from his blogging community to visit the literacy centers set up by Goducate for poor children in Sabah. They were accompanied by 4 friends from Nuffnang, Asia-Pacific’s first blog advertising community.

The ieatishootipost blog-community had earlier this year raised funds to purchase a vehicle for these poor children. MHC Asia (Singapore’s largest third party medical administrator) had matched a dollar for every dollar that ieatishootipost raised.

The blogging community, represented by these eleven, handed over a cheque for $22,000 (Singapore dollars) to Goducate for the purchase of the vehicle which will be used by the supervisors, teachers and students of Goducate’s literacy centers.

Due the shortage of time and the difficulty of reaching these centers, the team managed to see only 4 of the 7 Goducate literacy centers in Sabah. They had to take a boat and walk on rickety planks to reach one of the centers that was situated over a mangrove swamp. To visit another center that was 25 minutes walk from the road, they slipped and fell in the slippery mud and used banana leaves and car-mats as umbrellas. To visit another center that was in a swamp they sloshed through mud.

Needless to say, these dedicated foodies also enjoyed an amazing array of Sabah’s finest sea-food.

Their conclusion at the end of their short trip:

The food was excellent but the opportunity to see how Goducate’s simple education was changing the lives of these poor children was much better.

I’m sure that this will not be their last trip to encourage these poor children!
I’m confident that they will be challenging the other members of their large blogging community to be a part of Goducate’s dream of bringing literacy to the illiterate!

2010-09-132010-09-20

The small canteen

“Teacher your house is not just a school center, it’s our new health center too” said a happy mother to Teacher M. Teacher M is a cheerful mother who volunteered to teach the children in her small community. She holds classes for over 40 children in her small canteen. Their community is composed of two small long houses that are built at the back of a construction site, so the people have to walked about over a kilometer to buy sell anything.

Recently, there was a tragedy in the community. A 2 year old boy died because of asthma . For the past few days, the boy had fever and had difficulty in breathing. The mother, who never went to school, asked a neighborhood what to do. Then other neighbors told her “just boiled the skin of the trunk of the some-named tree and let your boy drink it, surely the “ampos” (asthma) will relieve”. This people are “Yakans”, one of the Philippines Muslim tribes. They are very low in literacy and also very loyal to what their ancestors believe. For example, they do not wear shoes and slippers because these things bring shame to their god and they just belong to people outside their world. As a result most of the children in their community are thin but have big stomachs, indicating malnutrition and worms.

So the mother of the boy did what the neighbors said. After few days of letting her boy drink the skin of the trunk, the boy got no relief.. So she brought him to the clinic because he was getting worse and weaker. Unfortunately, it was Malaysia Independence Day and clinics were closed. So she went home and tried to do things that could help relieve his difficulty in breathing. But at 12 midnight the boy passed away, then a heavy rain started to fall.

Early next morning, when Teacher M heard the news she went to comfort the mother. After that she called me “Teacher please come and bring all your stuff for health teaching”. So I asked “why”, but she said “just come”. So I brought all my notes that I had since my college years. As I arrived they told me the sad news. They thought that if only the mother knew what to do she could have her boy alive. Teacher M told me to do health teaching, ways to take care of their children in times of sickness. We held the health teaching in her small canteen with over 10 mothers carrying their babies for they thought a doctor was coming. I overheard Teacher M telling them “I’m sorry she’s not a doctor but they’re here because she and her friends want to help us in all they can do”. They smiled and nodded their heads. From that time onwards we spent a sweet time togeher. After teaching, Teacher Josephine helped me to take their blood pressures and we advised them to eat healthy foods and to help clean and take care of their environment and how to avoid sickness like asthma.

Afterwards, when the mothers were saying thank you and good byes, one mom told the teachers “We Yakans, we never went to school when we are young because our parents are very strong to the beliefs of our ancestors. But we really appreciate people like you who are willing to help us. Not just our children learning how to read and write. Now we are also learning how to take good care of them.”