Last week Goducate opened another literacy center in a swamp in Sabah for poor kids who cannot go to school. Because of the dampness of the swampy soil, the school-house had to be built on stilits.
Goducate provided 500 Malaysian Ringgit (about US$150) for some building material and the community chipped in to build their very own school-house.
The pride of the village
On the opening day, 240 students and their parents filled the school house patiently waiting for the Opening Program to begin.
Full house
Suddenly there was a loud cracking sound! There was panic as students scrambled to flee from the cracking floor planks. Thankfully no one was hurt and no one fell into the swampy soil below!
Cracked floor boards
When all the kids were safely out of the building, one of the village elders said in the native language “The show must go on! We must persevere!”
MHC Asia chairlady Cecilia Tan hands over key to Goducate Sabah supervisor, Ms Linn
MHC Asia, Goducate’s generous corporate sponsor has sponsored another vehicle to Goducate. MHC has already sponsored a van for Goducate’s Batam work and two vans for Goducate’s Cambodia Children’s Home.
MHC Asia has also sponsored funds to start a Goducate model livelihood farm in Laguna, Philippines.
It’s hard to keep eager mums from starting a literacy center!
Part of my schedule during my recent Sabah (East Malaysia) trip was to plan the start-up of more literacy centers. Our team had already seen the success of the first two literacy centers and were excited with the prospect of opening 5 more in the next 6 months.
temporary classroom
So after the excitement and joy of seeing over 400 kids learning their ABC’s and 123’s in the first 2 villages, I went with a smaller team to survey 3 more potential villages. When we reached the vicinity of the first potential village at the outskirts of the town, we parked our van and walked along a long narrow shaky “path” of planks over swampy ground towards a little shack. We were planning to meet the teacher, Ms K, whom we had trained last December.
road to schoolhouse
However, instead of meeting Ms K, we were greeted with the happy voices of about 40 children shouting “Good morning teachers!” As I peeked into the dark house, I saw Ms K teaching the kids using the plywood wall of her tiny kitchen/dining area as her blackboard. On this plywood wall was scrawled the alphabets. The kids were eagerly taking their turn identifying the alphabets.
Teacher K in yellow
“Hey, Ms K, weren’t you supposed to wait for us to come and discuss the setting up of a literacy center in your village?”
Well, the reply was “The mums couldn’t wait!”
Ms K was one of the mums that we had identified as potential teachers at our previous recruitment exercise late last year. Over 20 such mums were selected. They had to have a passion to teach kids and have some high-school education (preferably a high-school diploma). A master-teacher of phonics was tasked to teach them. The course lasted one week.
I left our “district” supervisor, Ms L (herself once an eager village mum) to discuss the future development plans with Ms K for the expansion of this literacy center to accommodate many more kids.
I was just too happy watching and listening to the kids enjoying their first taste of school to bother with the details of administration!
