Others – Page 12 – Goducate … Go And Educate!

2018-10-262018-11-14

Children from Goducate Children’s Home in Cambodia do tertiary education

The first child to be taken into the Goducate Children’s Home in Cambodia was Samuel Chuck. He joined the Home in November 2005, several years before the Home became part of Goducate. Since August of 2016, he has been a student at the American University of Phnom Penh, where he is pursuing a 4-year course in Bachelor of Arts, with a major in Global Affairs and a minor in Law. His tuition fees are USD9000 per school year but he has been awarded a half scholarship, and he works in the university to earn the rest of his fees.

Two others who have also started their tertiary education in Cambodia are the twins John and Jacob Phin . They are in a government vocational school doing 3-year courses, John in management, and Jacob in refrigeration and air-conditioning.

Two others from the Home went abroad. Joshua Kong completed his studies in a bible school in the Philippines, and returned to Cambodia in April this year to help in the Home and at a local church.

Adam Noo also went to the Philippines. He attended the Goducate Training Center in Iloilo from July 1 of 2017 until March of 2018. After his training at GTC, he transferred to Iligan City, a town in southern Philippines, and was able to complete two courses run by the Philippine Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA). One was on masonry from April 16 to May 7, 2018, and the other was on electrical installation and maintenance from May 22 to June 25, 2018. He is still in Iligan, doing a six-month TESDA course on gas acetylene welding. Adam has been fortunate in getting a scholarship for this course, as well as for his two other completed courses.

2018-10-052018-10-11

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.

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

Writer is Vivien Choo, Director of Goducate Singapore

2018-06-222018-10-24

Goducate moves towards video training

As Goducate continues to expand with more workers in more Asian countries, it has been very difficult to train new local staff and to upgrade the training of existing staff.

Most of Goducate‘s work is in remote rural communities, which requires many hours of travel to get there. So in the past we managed to train our staff only once or twice a year.

Better Wi-Fi coverage in rural Asia has now allowed us to do more training via video conferencing applications. Previous attempts to do video training via the Internet resulted in much frustration because of poor Wi-Fi connections in most of rural Asia.

Presently we are able to conduct video training from our headquarters in Singapore to our teams in Indonesia, Philippines, China, Kyrgyztan, Malaysia, and Vietnam.

Talking in Singapore to trainees in Philippines

Holding up an illustration for trainees to see

With more frequent and better training our existing Goducate teams ought to have a better impact on the communities they serve.

And as Wi-Fi coverage enters more remote areas, we will be more confident about expanding our work into remote areas because we become more certain that we can provide the necessary training to our staff.

Writer: Dr Paul Choo, Founder of Goducate