Disaster Relief – Page 6 – Goducate … Go And Educate!

2014-01-172014-01-23

Goducate makes tents for schools damaged by Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda)

One way by which Goducate is helping the victims of Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) that devastated large swathes of the Philippines in November 2013 is to provide temporary shelters for schools in north Panay that were damaged. North Panay is the area near the Goducate Training Center in Iloilo.

There are two approaches to providing these shelters. For classrooms that lost only their roofs, Goducate provides tarpaulins to serve as the roof. We call these “wrap-around tents”. The school teachers and parents put up bamboo and wooden rafters, and Goducate works with the locals to put up the 32×22 ft tarpaulins

When the walls and posts of roofless classrooms are structurally poor, as assessed by the engineering team from the Goducate Training Center in Iloilo, Goducate provides a “tent school”. The Goducate team has designed the tent schools to provide sufficient ventilation and insulation from the heat.

The Goducate team has been busy at the Goducate Training Center making these tent schools. We are fortunate to have people with the necessary skills to make these tent schools. When the Goducate Training Center was being built, we decided where possible to employ people from the neighboring villages and train them in various construction skills. One of them learnt welding and has since become a contractor for concrete and steel works. His team has been employed to help make the tent school. One tent frame can be made by 3 people in 4 days. The tarpaulin roof and wall are made by a separate team, so the manufacture of a complete tent is finished in 4 days. A tent takes 4 people 1 h to assemble.

Our target for phase 1 of our relief work is 25 units by the end of January. As of Jan 15, we had 5 full tents (which have been assembled on site) and 10 frames. Work will be speeded up in the coming week with more workers on the job.

We will soon be launching the Goducate Tent Schools with a teachers’ appreciation day to commend teachers for their hard work and resilience during the recent crisis.

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Goducate trains typhoon victims on Panay island to use chainsaws

One of the main types of relief that Goducate is offering to the victims of Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) is teaching them how to use a chainsaw. The typhoon blew down so many trees, some of which flattened homes, schools, and other buildings, that being able to chop up the trees would allow access for rebuilding and provide material for construction work, not only of buildings but also of boats that were lost or destroyed in fishing villages.

Goducate is concentrating its efforts on Panay island, a place devastated by the typhoon that is nearest to the Goducate Training Center in Iloilo.

One of the first few villages on Panay Island that Goducate has started to work with is Bayas. On a recent re-visit to Bayas, Goducate held a Christmas party for the children of the primary school, while the men were taught how to use a chainsaw and the women learnt about nutrition.

Children having fun in front of one of the temporary shelters put up by Goducate for the school.

Parents and children choosing “Japanese slippers” (flip-flops) given by Goducate

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Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) Report 2

I was in the Philippines from Nov 23 to 29 to see the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda). I visited North Panay, Leyte and Samar. I’ve seen poverty and suffering in many different countries over the past 30 years but I was unprepared for what I saw on this trip. For mile upon mile it looked like a super large truck had run over entire communities, farm, and the whole countryside.

Thankfully, the food situation has improved greatly thanks to humanitarian efforts of nations and charity organizations. I believe that most communities (including remote ones) have enough food at this time. However, I believe that this food supply will slowly run down as relief organizations start pulling out at the end of this year and will “dry up” in about 6 months’ time when the relief work will be handed over to the Philippines government.

As I saw the great needs, I realized that Goducate had to focus on its core-strengths of education. I saw dozens of damaged schools with roofs that had blown off. In the undamaged sections of these schools, lived many refugees who had lost their homes.

The Department of Education has declared that schools should re-open for classes. There is good intention behind this order to resume classes but in reality how can classes be conducted in roofless classrooms, or rooms occupied by refugees? No-one seemed to have an answer to this simple question!

So we decided to start Goducate Tent Schools to meet this need. Goducate’s engineering team has designed large tents that are suitable as classrooms. These will be set up in school compounds (in cooperation with the local educational authorities). If the regular teachers are still reporting for duty, then they will be the ones to teach in these tents. If not, Goducate community development workers (CDWs) will serve as relief-teachers. In addition to regular classes, our CDWs will conduct classes on agriculture, carpentry, and public health.

Goducate will provide planting materials for root-crops and vegetables, as well as the worms (African Night Crawlers) used to produce vermicompost (an organic fertilizer). Many of the affected communities are coastal fishing communities with no culture of growing food. Our CDWs will thus teach mothers and students how to produce fertilizers and how to grow vegetables.

Goducate will provide chain-saws and other tools to clear fallen trees and produce lumber from them. Our CDWs will teach carpentry skills to men and teenage male students so that they can rebuild their own houses with help from us (eg, in the form of nails and roofing materials).

Our CDWs will also teach mothers and teenage female students public health to prevent the onset of communicable diseases from mosquitos and dirty water.

In other words, Goducate Tent Schools will be both regular school classrooms and a community classrooms for relevant survival skills.

Goducate is in the process of sealing a partnership with Water Missions International to provide clean drinking water to communities.

I hope that with this project Goducate will help the helpless help themselves and that these will then move on to help others to help themselves.