Last week Goducate country representatives, the headquarters team, Goducate partners, Goducate Training Center staff and trainees, and invited guests attended the 4-day Third Goducate Summit, which was held at the Goducate Training Center in Iloilo. The country representatives came from Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Those from Malaysia and Myanmar were unable to be present.
Country representatives as well as project leaders and consultants in specialist areas of work shared their experiences, mistakes, and lessons learnt, while headquarters staff shared dreams for the future, drove home good management and accounting practices, and reminded the audience about internet security. Each day closed with a lively question-and-answer session.
The “real” business, though, was conducted on the day after the summit ended, during focus-group meetings. These were led by project leaders in various areas of work—such as agriculture, livelihood training, sports, music, English teaching, etc. During these sessions, those specially interested in following up such work were able to clarify in greater detail what they wanted to know.
The meeting was a chance for Goducate workers to share ideas about how best to help the needy help themselves in various ways. For the present batch of trainees it was an opportunity to learn about Goducate work in different countries, and to talk face-to-face with the country representatives of places they might like to work in when they finish their training.
Presentation by India representativeFocus group meeting on agricultureTrainees who presented a glow-in-the-dark performance
Last week, Dr Low Lee Yong launched his book “I Dare to Dream”. About 200 people attended the launch held at MHC Asia’s premises in Singapore.
Dr Low, who is the founder of MHC Asia, Singapore’s largest third-party medical administrator, which links over 1000 clinics in Singapore, has been a staunch supporter of Goducate from its beginning. MHC Asia is Goducate’s largest corporate sponsor, giving up to 10% of its profits to Goducate. It also provides us with space in its office for use as Goducate’s headquarters, as well as with staffing help and services that we need to run our office. These provisions enable Goducate to save money on office rental and administrative costs, which can instead be used to fund our projects.
In the book, Dr Low describes his life growing up in a poor village and struggling against all odds to achieve his dreams. This story resonates with Goducate’s goal of helping needy Asians help themselves—by first helping them to dare to dream.
Dr Low dedicated this book to Goducate with these words: “This book is dedicated to the lives that have been touched by Goducate and the lives it will continue to touch”. He presented me a personally signed copy with these words “Dear Paul, Thanks for bringing Goducate into MHC and for bringing new meaning into MHC business”.
I brought a pile of personally signed copies of the book to Goducate Training Center in Iloilo, Philippines, to give to our new batch of trainees, and I encouraged them to read the book and to learn to dream. Daring to dream is an important part of our training because our graduates will go on to help needy Asians—many of whom fear to dream of ever breaking out of their hopeless lives!
Dr Low’s book, “I Dare to Dream”Dr Low speaking at the book launch
Goducate has been growing “too fast.” This is a good problem that we need to address in 2013.
Existing projects are growing faster than we had anticipated. And new opportunities have arisen before we felt that we had stabilized our on-going projects.
We are now serving needy Asians in Philippines, Cambodia, China, Malaysia, Indonesia, and India. If all goes well, we will start in Myanmar by next month. Thereafter, there are exciting potential prospects for serving in Laos and Thailand.
The Goducate Training Center in Iloilo, Philippines, has trained about 50 community development workers (CDWs) in 2012, and almost every one of the graduates is serving in needy areas of Asia (Philippines, Cambodia, Indonesia, and China). More than half of our graduates are serving in Goducate projects, while the others are serving in their home-places.
The next intake starts their training in next month. We are hoping to take in another batch in June. We hope that 2013 will see 100 CDWs graduate in 2013.
The Goducate Language Center in Batam, Indonesia took in its first batch of about 20 students 2 months ago. Eight of the students are Filipino CDWs who recently graduated from Goducate Training Center. These CDWs are studying Bahasa Indonesia before they are sent out to various parts of Indonesia. The other students are Indonesians who are learning English so that they can help Indonesians to learn English or help the Filipino CDWs as interpreters.
I will be in Bandung, Indonesia, next week to look at a piece of land that has been donated to us for the building of Goducate Indonesia headquarters. We hope also to develop a Goducate model farm in Bandung so that we can expand our agricultural programs in Indonesia. The demand for agricultural assistance is huge in this large, fertile, and under-developed country.
In 2013, we also hope to expand an ‘iconic” Goducate program—the Sing Your English (SYE) program. SYE is designed by Goducate to help teach Asians to speak English by overcoming the twin obstacles that have hindered the learning of English— namely, that of boredom and fear. SYE uses custom-composed, catchy songs to help overcome these obstacles. The results of initial testing of SYE programs in a few Indonesian schools last year have been very encouraging. There is a long list of schools hoping to use SYE. However, we believe that further testing and fine-tuning needs to be done before we offer this program to hundreds of schools, first in Indonesia and then in other Asian
countries.
Goducate has several programs that have been successfully used in different parts of Asia (eg. music for the masses, livelihood skills training for women, backyard farming for semi-urban slums, sports as a livelihood). In 2013 we hope to fine-tune and package these programs so that they can be expanded to reach far more needy Asians.
Currently, Goducate headquarters in Singapore is run by volunteers who meet in premises belonging to a sponsor but work from home. In 2013, we hope to have our own office space, and some key paid staff to coordinate and expand our fast-growing work. This will be a paradigm shift from our “volunteers only” policy at headquarters since the founding of Goducate. However, this is another good “problem” that we have to face so that we can improve our organization and efficiency, to help more needy Asians help themselves.
Meeting room that sponsor shares with usEntrance to shared premises
