Ever wondered what it is like to be an abandoned child, to see your family split up because a parent is always drunk, to have to pick garbage to help feed the rest of the family? And when “fortunes” change as a child is admitted to a children’s home, what is it like to have to adjust to living with so many others, to keeping some kind of a routine, to having go to classes? What else bothers such a child? What touches him or her? These and many other insights can be gained from “In The Shoes of a Cambodian Child”, a book consisting of stories by the children at the Goducate Children’s Home in Cambodia.
The idea of this book is to increase awareness of what goes on in the minds of children from dysfunctional families. It is so easy to push thoughts about the poor and needy to the back of one’s mind. We hope that the stories in this book will enable readers to empathize with the children from dysfunctional families and think about helping this and many other disadvantaged groups.
What an experience and what a luxury it was for the Goducate violinists from Laguna to be trained at the Wolfgang Violin Studio in Singapore. Until they were featured in the Channel News Asia programme Once Upon a Village and then selected for a short period of intensive training in Singapore, never did the 5 selected musicians, coming as they did from poor village and small-town communities, dream they would ever be taught daily by trained teachers, and then allowed to practise for 4 hours at a time every day in air-conditioned comfort. There were so many techniques to learn and try to master, and so much musical knowledge to absorb, in the short time they were here.
The training programme for them included attendance at concerts and observing a master class in action. On top of that there was a visit to the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, to tour the facilities there as well as to learn what requirements were needed for admission to the academy. Will they ever satisfy those requirements? Who knows, but the visit gave them something extra to hope for.
And hope is something that Goducate wants to bring to deprived communities. Even if the 5 violinists do not make it to the academy, the chance they have had to come to Singapore for some training is enough to give the 200-plus other students in the Goducate music project hope that they too might get a similar opportunity at some stage.
Arrival at Wolfgang Violin Studio for first day of trainingTraining by Min Lee (extreme right) while being filmed by Channel News Asia for part 2 of Once Upon a Village programmeExploring facilities at NAFA
In March this year, Channel News Asia brought two experts from Singapore, violinist Min Lee of Wolfgang Music Studio and director of the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music orchestra Wang Ya Hui, to Bay in Laguna Province, The Philippines, to see Goducate’s music project and to suggest what might be done to give the project a boost. This visit was for the first of a two-part programme called Once Upon A Village, which was first screened middle of this year. Min Lee and Wang Ya Hui suggested that 5 of the music students be brought to Singapore for some intensive training and to prepare them for some music exams.
Goducate’s music project was started to attract street kids back into some form of education. The scheme turned out to be so attractive to children and so successful that it has been extended to any child in very poor communities, not just out-of-school kids.
Through music the children have been taught discipline, teamwork, and leadership. Through their musical ability some have got scholarships to go back to school or to continue schooling. The more advanced students have formed two orchestras. The senior orchestra has been invited to play at local functions, which has given the students a chance to earn some pocket money. Students have thus been able to help themselves. And in line with Goducate philosophy they have also been using their ability to help others, because the more advanced students teach the less advanced ones in their own or in neighbouring villages. Currently there are more than 250 students at 12 areas in 7 villages in Laguna province participating in the Goducate music project.
Arrival at Changi Airport, Singapore. L-R: Matthew, Liezl, Melissa, Veronica, Bernard (Goducate orchestra conductor), JaysonWith Sheryl Teo, a producer of Once Upon A Village programme
Preparatory to the trip of their lives, the 5 shortlisted students underwent many sessions of training by Elaine Mallari from the Manila Symphony Orchestra. They finally arrived in Singapore chaperoned by their conductor on Oct 22. Channel News Asia will be filming them while they are here for the second part of the Once Upon A Village programme.
Wolfgang Music Studio had kindly arranged for Asian Cultural Enterprise (ACES) to sponsor the trip for the Goducate musicians.
