Category: Learning Centers

The Goducate Music Program in Laguna, The Philippines, has been very successful in getting Filipino youth off the streets and back to schools and colleges, in instilling in them discipline, and in giving them hope and a new sense of purpose. Many of our music students are also busy training subsequent batches of new students. Some of them are also earning income by performing at functions and by teaching in our new music studio. Five of them have been sent to Singapore and trained by a well-known music school, Wolfgang Violin Studio. One of them is presently being trained to be a teacher at Wolfgang Violin Studio.

Successful as this program is, it reaches only the more musically inclined sector of the population. A large number of youth, especially the males, are not inclined to be musicians. However, most of these are crazy about basketball. The Philippines is indeed a “basketball crazy nation”. Every little village has basketball hoops hanging from lamp-posts, and almost every town has its covered basketball court.

When Goducate saw the potential of using this basketball-mania to further its goal of “helping Asians help themselves”, it appointed a well-known Filipino basketball coach, David “Boycie” Zamar, as its Sports Director. Boycie has played professional basketball in The Philippines, has been trained in the USA, and has coached the Philippines youth team as well as teams in the Middle-East, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. He is one of only 5 FiBA-certified referees in The Philippines.

Boycie shares Goducate’s dream of using sports to teach useful life-skills such as discipline, endurance, team-work, obedience, and fair play. He also aims to see many of these youth get back to school and college—via sports scholarships. After barely a week with us, he managed to get one of the youth into a college sports program.

 

 

With the help of a friend who is a certified FiBA referee, he has organized training for referees. This will not only improve the quality of play by reducing the number of on-court fights, but will also provide the referees with a means of earning a living as referees for village games. (Referees are paid 300 pesos/game).

Goducate plans to include in the sports program other livelihood training.  For a start the basketballers will also be trained in skills such as welding (in The Philippines TESDA [Technical Education and Skills Development Authority] program) and agriculture (growing moringa as part of sports nutrition education). We are confident that this program will help Asians help themselves.

The new premises of the Goducate Music Learning Center in Laguna was officially opened on Feb 9. Attending the opening and the dinner that followed were members from the office of the Municipal Government of Bay and from the Philippines National Police (Bay Chapter), as well as Goducate supporters from Singapore.

Apart from serving as a training center for Goducate musicians, the place can be used by our musicians (at a token “rent”) for teaching their private students.

 

The Goducate music project will not only teach music, but also imbue the musicians with qualities such as punctuality, diligence, discipline, endurance, respect. Reminders that these are qualities to be learnt are posted on the walls of the center.

Goducate’s music program in Laguna continues to expand, and more and more youth are being motivated to dream and hope through music. Five youth from this program will arrive in Singapore on July 15 on “scholarships” offered through Singaporean violinist Min Lee, who visited Laguna with her team for the filming of Goducate’s music
program for Channel News Asia’s “Once Upon a Village” series on projects being carried out in villages in Asia.

Presently, our music program is reaching 11 villages in Laguna. One of the most successful villages is Talahiban. Recently, we bought a piece of land there to build a Goducate center and “music studio.” The immediate reason why we need a “studio” is because the noise (not music!) from youngsters learning to play musical instruments can be quite unbearable to the neighbors! Another reason is that we hope that in the not-too-distant future our musicians will be good enough for more intensive training in a studio, which could double up as a place where they can give performances.

We look forward to the day when the children of Talahiban will dream BIG dreams – not only in music but also in other worthy professions and pursuits.