Category: Training Center

Goducate Training Center (GTC) in Iloilo, Philippines, is still being developed.

The basic facilities have been completed since April this year. The Multi-Purpose Hall with its gymnasium, offices, training rooms, dining facilities, and kitchen are now fully utilized for the training of our GTC trainees and for other groups (especially weekend youth groups).

The agricultural facilities of “greenhouse”, vermiculture beds, aquaculture pond and agricultural fields now serve as the laboratory for our GTC trainees — who have to undergo a compulsory basic agricultural course, so that they can help needy Asian rural communities.

Some recreational facilities (eg. dipping-pool, zip-line, restaurant, facilities for
horse-rides, etc) were also completed in April 2011. These recreational facilities are not only used by the youth campers but are also meant to help GTC earn revenue from organizations who will rent GTC for their corporate functions.

After the basic facilities were completed in April, GTC has been slowly adding facilities as funds are available. The unusually heavy rains this year have caused some erosion to the slopes of GTC and to the impounding lake, and hampered our construction works.

So far, the restaurant’s kitchen extension and the children’s playground have been successfully completed. The faculty housing and the ladies’ dormitories are still under construction. Additional drainage works are being added to prevent soil erosion. And as soon as the rainy season ends, the main camp roads will be “concretized”.

We hope to complete all these projects before the end of the year so that GTC can be ready for its 2012 intake of 100+ trainees, who will be trained to help needy Asians help themselves.

Goducate Training Center (GTC) in Iloilo, Philippines, is now busy holding youth camps regularly. During the Philippine summer months, youth camps/gatherings are held almost weekly. Many of the youth are transported in from poorer communities to be trained in discipline, team-work, confidence, leadership skills, life-skillls, etc.

These activities not only train these youth in many useful life-skills but also provide practical training for our GTC trainees on how to run youth activities. Presently, a pilot batch of over 20 trainees is undergoing their training in GTC. We hope that several of these initial trainees will stay on to serve as trainers next year – when we plan to
increase our intake of trainees to over 100. We also hope that several of them will be sent overseas (especially to Indonesia) to work with the large number of needy youth in other Asian countries.

This year the rainfall has been unusually heavy at GTC and has somewhat hampered our activities and other training activities (especially our agricultural training). However, learning to hold youth activities in the rain is a useful skill for our trainees as
they learn to help needy Asian youth help themselves – even under difficult conditions.

Goducate Training Center in Iloilo, Philippines has begun training its pilot batch of trainees. For the past 3 weeks, 24 full-time trainees have started learning the basics of agriculture from experienced agricultural experts and the basics of teaching from pedagogic lecturers. These skills will lay the foundation for them as they serve as community workers helping needy communities to feed themselves and educate themselves.

This pilot batch of trainees are all staff of Goducate. We felt that it is best for our own staff to undergo training first, so that they will understand the challenges and struggles that future batches of trainees will undergo. Furthermore, training “insiders” and getting feedback from them will also help us to fine-tune our training program for future batches.

The training is divided into morning classroom sessions, followed by afternoon practical sessions of agricultural work in the fields and weekend practical sessions of teaching youth from the neighboring communities. Since the trainees have to continue to perform their regular Goducate work, their schedules are very heavy. Furthermore, the unusually heavy rains have made field work even more arduous.

Hopefully, some of these trainees will be able to help in training the next batch of trainees, and the lessons learned from this initial training will help the faculty to make necessary adjustments to our future training programs.

Goducate Training Center hopes to train hundreds of workers annually
to help the billions of needy Asians to help themselves.