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Goducate starts third center in the Philippines

Goducate Baguio was launched on March 2. Baguio is located in the Province of Benguet, a part of Luzon, which sits at the northern end of the Philippines. Although once the capital of Benguet, Baguio is now a chartered city in that it is administered independently from the province.

Present at the launch were Goducate founder Paul Choo from Singapore and teams from Goducate Iloilo and Goducate Laguna.

At the half-day conference attended by community leaders from Baguio and Benguet, Paul Choo explained the goal, mission, and vision of Goducate. Carmela Damaso from Goducate Laguna then described the platforms used there for reaching the community. Finally, Leo Decinal shared about the partnership between Goducate Laguna and the Regional Mobile Force Battalion (RMFB) Calabarzon. Calabarzon is an administrative region made up of five provinces, one of which is Laguna.

After the conference, courtesy calls were made on the Commander of the RMFB of Cordillera, which is an administrative region on Luzon, and on the Mayor of Baguio City. Both expressed their approval of Goducate’s goal of developing leaders, who then will help others.

Already community leaders in Baguio trained by Goducate have been helping the Philippine National Police with the Enhanced Revitalized Internal Cleansing Strategy (ERICS). ERICS is a re-training program for members of the police force who have erred in some way. The aim of the program is to have a clean, disciplined police force.

Leaders learning about Goducate from Paul Choo
Our Team with the team from RMFB-15 (Cordillera).

*Our guest writer is Cristine Joy Capsula, a staff member at Camp Goducate, Laguna.

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Goducate visits earthquake victims in Mindanao, Philippines

The most recent series of earthquakes that hit the Philippines on Nov 16, 30 and 31 left North Cotabato, a province in the northern part of the Island of Mindanao (the second largest group of islands in the country), in shambles. 

Some of the houses were newly built but none escaped the earthquake

On Dec 5, five Goducate Philippines staff, in partnership with Sultan Kudarat Association, visited Barangay Buenavista in the Municipality of Makilala, in North Cotabato. Barangay Buenavista is one of the 38 barangays (villages) in Makilala. 20,704 families (some 103,520 persons) reside in the Municipality of Makilala, where the earthquakes eroded more than 200 hectares of land.

The visiting group had first to get a clearance pass from the Makilala Incident Management Team before proceeding to the relocation site. The specific relocation site that the group visited was housing about 150 families from Sitios Lapu-Lapu and Rizal. The relocation site is a private property owned by a businessman who generously allowed his rubber plantation to be occupied by those whose houses were destroyed by the earthquake.

The classes have resumed in tents like this in Barangay Buenavida, Makilala, North Cotabato

The local elementary school in Barangay Buenavida was also destroyed by the earthquake, so the teachers and the remaining students resumed classes in makeshift classrooms made of tents in the same relocation site. According to the teachers, only about 120 of the more than 200 pupils have remained. The rest had left North Cotabato out of fear that the earthquake might hit the province once again. 

During the relief operations, lunch was served, and packed goods were given following the master list of the households registered in the relocation site. As a stress-debriefing procedure, the Goducate staff together with the partners from Sultan Kudarat Association facilitated games for the children and adults, separately.

The names were called out for the goods according to the masterlist given by the Makilala Incident Management Team

*Our guest writer is Carmela Damaso, a Goducate staff member in Iloilo.
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Goducate musicians from Philippines and singers from Indonesia perform in Singapore

A team of Goducate musicians from the Philippines, and a team of children from Indonesia trained in Goducate’s Sing Your English (SYE) program were in Singapore to perform at MHC Asia Group Pte Ltd’s 25th anniversary dinner on Oct 7.

Musicians at MHC 25th

SYE team performing

The trip to Singapore was an opportunity that the children might otherwise never have to travel out of their country. Through the generosity of Dr Low Lee Yong, founder and CEO of MHC, the children also had a few days enjoying Singapore’s attractions.

Performers having fun at end of program

The music program in Laguna, Philippines, began as a means of attracting out-of-school youth back into education by offering lessons on playing the recorder. It has grown into successful program, with children learning how to play a whole range of instruments. Not only has the team been invited to play at various events, but many individuals have obtained university scholarships based on their musical ability, and two are now university students majoring in music.

The SYE program is a popular program in Indonesia for giving children the confidence to speak English. Although students learn English in school, most do not use the language out of class, but learning the language through song somehow gets them singing English sentences wherever they happen to be.

For its 25th anniversary, MHC also donated a total of Sing$1 million to several organizations. Goducate, which received Sing$300,000, was the largest recipient.

MHC donations