Others – Page 18 – Goducate … Go And Educate!

2013-05-242013-05-25

Goducate surveys Vietnam

Last week two of us from Goducate Headquarters surveyed the possibility of starting a work in Vietnam.

Six years ago, I went to Vietnam to study the potential of sending English teachers to Vietnam. At that time I felt that Vietnam was not quite ready to aggressively promote the use of the English language. However, on this trip I sensed an urgency to make Vietnam an English- speaking nation.

The professor I met six years ago in Hanoi is now the person in charge of a national program to make Vietnam an English-speaking nation by the year 2020. When we met in Danang (Central Vietnam) last week, he shared with us the government’s plan. Much thinking has gone into this plan and substantial funds are already allocated for this project. However, one of the bottle-necks in this plan is the availability of sufficient numbers of foreign English teachers.

Thankfully, Goducate Training Center (GTC) in Iloilo, Philippines, continues to train English teachers who are willing to serve wherever there is a need. My hope is that GTC graduates will be able to help Vietnam to achieve their English-speaking goal. We hope to send our first pilot group of 5 teachers to Danang by September. They will undergo training in Vietnamese culture and language before proceeding to teach in Vietnamese high schools.

Danang, Vietnam’s third largest city, has been chosen to be our “base” because it is less expensive and crowded than the two larger cities of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Danang is a lovely sea-side city with wide streets, clear blue skies and many energetic young Vietnamese who desire to learn English.

Eager Vietnamese students learning English

Danang---beautiful beaches and clear blue skies — Danang—beautiful beaches and clear blue skies

2013-05-14

Goducate starts to move into Bangladesh

Since Goducate aims to help needy Asians help themselves, Bangladesh is a country that has attracted its attention.

Recently, Bangladesh was in the news because of a horrific factory collapse that killed over 1100 garment workers. I was in the country when that accident took place.

Bangladesh is the most densely populated large country. It has about 160 million people (half of US population) squeezed into a land area the size of Florida. It is a land of natural tragedies (cyclones and floods). Most of its export earnings come from the garment industry— where the starting wage is less than US$40 per month. 3.5 million people work in terrible conditions in these garment factories.

I spent several days surveying the capital city of Dhaka with a friend, Peter, who is a Korean doing his doctoral thesis on Bangladeshi culture. Dhaka is one of the most crowded cities in the world with over 400,000 rickshaws on its streets every day. It is also called the City of Mosques—with mosques everywhere in this country where 90% are Muslims. Since Peter is fluent in Bangladeshi, we were able to move around freely and talk to people, from those in the poorest slums to those in the most expensive universities.

At the end of my survey, I decided that we first need to learn more about Bangladesh before we start any Goducate projects. I believe that the best place to learn about Bangladesh is in Dhaka University, the premier university of Bangladesh. Peter does his research in this university. It is the dream of almost every Bangladeshi to study in Dhaka University. Though it is the premier university, its facilities are overstretched. In the dormitories that I visited, 35 men sleep in a crowded room (the size of a typical small classroom) on mats.

One of our recent graduates from Goducate Training Center, Jaime, has volunteered to be the first Goducate worker in Bangladesh. Jaime, who grew up in a poor family in the Philippines, has extensive experience working among the poor in various development agencies. He has worked in Bangladesh previously when he was with another organization. He is presently trying to enrol in Dhaka University to study Bangladeshi.

We dream of the day when Goducate can help needy Bangladeshis help themselves.

2013-03-262013-03-28

Dental Hygiene Day at Literacy Center at Burol

The teachers at the Goducate Literacy Centers in Laguna have embarked on a program to teach hygiene to the students attending these centers. They started with teaching children at the literacy center in Burol, where 33 children were taught how to brush their teeth.

Each child went away with a gift pack that included a toothbrush, toothpaste, a towel, and a piece of soap.

The program will be introduced in turn to the other 4 other literacy centers.