Category: Disaster Relief

In August 2012 torrential rains known informally as Typhoon Habagat caused serious flooding around Laguna Bay. One way by which Goducate helped rehabilitate some of the affected families in Tagumpay was through training the men in agricultural skills. 5 of the men subsequently set up a community farm on a 3000 sq m piece of land that a former mayor of Bay offered to Goducate. By April 2013, the men were starting to harvest vegetables not only for their own families to consume, but also for sale.

However, in August 2013, the place was flooded again by monsoon rains and remained so until Dec 2013. Fortunately an agricultural technique that the men had learnt was hydroponics. One of the men turned to this form of gardening, growing vegetables hydroponically in somebody else’s backyard and in a small piece of land rented for Goducate staff housing.

Selling his vegetables at the wet market is now is main source of living. He and his wife are at the market nearly every day by 4 am with their produce. When they do not have enough of their own vegetables, they buy stock from the Goducate Model Farm or from other small farmers.

Since last Saturday, Goducate has been setting up tent schools or putting tarpaulin on schoolrooms that lost their roofs in the villages in North Panay that were hit by Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda). There are four teams going round doing this.

At each school where these structures are set up, a Teachers’ Appreciation Day is held. The teachers deserve the appreciation because many have themselves lost homes, yet they turn up to teach under very difficult conditions. Each class appoints a representative to say words of appreciation to their teachers, and the students sing for their teachers, and present their teachers with thank-you cards that they have made and flowers they have picked up from the roadside. In addition, the Goducate massage team offers the teachers some stress relief.

The teachers have been touched by the gestures of appreciation, in some cases to the point of tears.

In the aftermath of Super Typhoon Yolanda, one of the critical needs that surfaced was safe water for the affected persons.  When Mr. Jan Daniel, country director of Water Missions International (WMI), communicated his organization’s interest to partner with Goducate in providing safe water to the typhoon-affected households in Western Visayas, this opened the door to more effective community development partnership.

On Jan 17, Goducate and WMI representatives signed the Memorandum of Agreement that defines the strategic relationship between the two organizations.  Not only will Goducate monitor the operations of the 17 Living Water Treatment Systems (LWTS) that WMI has installed in Panay and Negros Occidental, but it will also be responsible for transferring the LWTS to more needy communities after the disaster-response period.  In addition, the Goducate-trained CDWs will be deployed to areas with LWTS to help the community attain holistic and sustainable development.

Most of the households in Western Visayas are still reliant on untreated spring, rain, or surface water and from personally made dug-outs and tube wells.  Results from WMI water analyses showed traces of impurities and presence of the bacterium E coli in some samples taken from community wells and other common drinking sources.

Each LWTS can process untreated water into safe drinking water at the rate of up to 3,000 liters per hour.  The system has three big filters for clean water processing and a chlorinator that is able to neutralize any microbial presence in water.

WMI’s headquarters is in Charleston, South Carolina, USA.  It operates 10 country programs in South America, Africa, and Asia and has served 49 different countries on 5 different continents. Through the Goducate-WMI partnership, more people suffering from water-borne diseases in rural Philippines will soon have access to clean and safe water.