Training Center – Page 29 – Goducate … Go And Educate!

2010-12-062010-12-01

Sustainable development – Bamboo Sky-city

The Goducate Training Center in Iloilo, Philippines has over 4000 trees of mahogany and many clumps of bamboo.

When we did not have sufficient funds to construct dormitories, our planning team decided to use available materials on the site to build huts above the ground in the mahogany forest.

Bamboo clumps that were being cleared for site development provided most of the building materials for the huts and the inter-connecting suspension bridges.

The mahogany forest provided the “bases” for the huts which were built between 5 to 10 meters above the ground. With plenty of imagination and little costs, “sky city” was constructed in a few weeks.

The huts will provide shelter for our trainees in a rough but pleasant environment. Mosquitos will be kept away using organic materials (eg. lemon grass).

This bamboo sky-city will train Goducate trainees to live in simplicity using sustainable materials.

2010-12-032010-12-01

Sustainable backyard farming – Yard long beans

On my recent visit to the Goducate Training Center in Iloilo, Philippines, I was surprised at how large our vegetables looked.

The average bitter gourd was about a foot (25 cm) long. The okras (ladies fingers) were over 6 inches (12 cm) long. But what really surprised me were the long beans. I’d never seen such long long beans before. They were about a yard (almost one meter) long and thick as my thumb! They were called yard-long beans.

I thought the phrase “yard long” was just a nick-name for our large produce until we sat down for a Goducate meeting one night and was told that one of our volunteer agricultural advisors was away in Thailand teaching the Thais how to grow yard-long beans. It was then that I realized that this was a special variety of long beans.

On further research I realized that this was not the usual variety of long beans that I’d seen in most supermarkets but was actually a different variety altogether. It was a variety of cow-pea.

I discovered that it is a fast-grower. In less than 60 days of sowing on our earth-worm produced organic fertilizer, we can pluck and pluck and pluck these beans for the next one year!! These beans can grow several inches per day!

I discovered that it is extremely tasty!! And that it is nutritious – and is full of proteins, which the poor lack.

It is exciting that Goducate can help put veg@tables for Asia’s needy!

2010-11-262010-11-26

The “Software” @ Goducate Training Center in Iloilo, Philippines

Having met and worked with many teams in various corporate companies or organisations from different countries, diverse backgrounds, multi-racial, cross-cultures over the last 25 years, I must admit that the team of key personnel/volunteers at the Goducate Training Center in Iloilo, Philippines is very different!

May be different is not a good word to describe this group of people. Let me think of a more appropriate adjective … passionate, well, more than that. Committed, yes that’s what they are. United, definitely! Bold, creative, dedicated, energetic … the list goes on … but one thing that comes up all the time is FUN!

Whether is the construction of buildings/huts, the irrigation lake and canals, plant-nursery, green-house, vermi-culture beds, activity fields, hiking trails, clearing of land, terracing of slopes, planting of hybrid rice or vegetables and fruit-trees, the FUN element never seem to cease!

I can’t quite describe what makes this great team of workers so unique, but there is certainly something special in them! So much excitement! So much enthusiasm! So much zeal! … that it is influential and spreading to those around them!

It was great to see the “hardware” (training centre) shaping up but it felt better to see the “software” going strong and progressing on the right track! Indeed, “People makes the difference”!

As we discussed the business model and first phase of training programmes at the Centre to groom community workers when the multi-purpose hall is completed by end of this year, each minute did not go by without extreme excitement from these core workers. They are so willing to adapt and be flexible, going all out to make it work!

We are hopeful that this training centre project will excel because these people are having a great time developing and implementing their plans, or rather dreams to help their own needy community to help themselves!