PDF Article – Healing with health and hope
Typhoon Yolanda Report 1
Goducate Training Center (GTC) is situated in Iloilo.
Thankfully, Typhoon Yolanda (aka Haiyan) veered north as it neared Iloilo and GTC was spared from the full impact of Yolanda. GTC only suffered minor damage and the loss of a few trees.
Immediately after Yolanda passed, our Disaster Relief Task Force swung into action. Our team has helped in other disasters but Yolanda’s destruction surpasses them all. In our previous major relief effort in eastern Mindanao caused by Super Typhoon Bopha (aka Pablo) last year our team reported “indescribable damage”. This time the same team reported that the damage is much worse!
We realize that we have to be wise in our relief efforts so that we do not waste our limited human and financial resources. Our usual strategy is to bring “immediate relief” in the first few weeks of our operations. Bottled water and ready-to-eat food is vital for those who have not had any food or drink for a few days. This is akin to setting up an IV drip for a dying patient. In our emergency-provisions are also other necessities (eg. matches, candles, canned food). Nails and fasteners are also very useful because many houses have lost their roofs and the rains continue after the typhoon has passed. With these nails they are able to use bits of wood to provide some shelter from the rain.
In our teams are trained nurses to provide first-aid to those who have suffered from falling and flying debris and provide medications for those who are sick from exposure and lack of food. We try to focus our efforts on places that are easier to reach from GTC so that we can be maximally effective and minimize costs of travel. This means that we will focus on northern Panay. We also focus our efforts on places where we have “contacts” so that eventual follow-up work will be more
effective.
Though we focus on northern Panay, we will also try to help those who are most affected by Yolanda, namely, Tacloban (Leyte). Today our team leader left Iloilo for Tacloban to survey the area and to meet our contacts there and to assess how we can help.
We must plan for this relief effort as if it is a long-distance race. After we’ve helped people to survive with food, water and medicines, we must help them to “get back” by rebuilding their houses, replanting their crops, etc. This is the difficult part of relief work that most organizations shun but this is where Goducate’s philosophy of “helping needy Asians help themselves” will be most useful.
Looking forward in 2013
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.
