Category: Livelihood Training

Mr Ortiz is a very persistent man. He is also a very generous man.

When Typhoon Habagat flooded the area around Laguna bay in Aug 2012, Goducate tried to rehabilitate some of the families by training the men in agricultural skills and helping them set up a community farm in Tagumpay. It turned out to be very productive (see blogs Apr 19, 2013, Feb 14, 2014, Feb 21, 2014, and Mar 28, 2014). Unfortunately, the area is very flood prone during the rainy season, and the farm is unusable for many months of the year, so last year the other farmers gave up working the farm. Only Mr Ortiz persisted.

He is able to use the farm only from November to May. He starts with planting leafy vegetables, then tomatoes and eggplants. Only a couple of weeks ago he was able to harvest his “Black Behi” Pechay. When he had harvested enough for himself to sell at various markets, he allowed the other villagers to collect what they wanted—at no charge. There was enough for them to sell.

Mr Ortiz sells vegetables at various markets. When the farm at Tagumpay is not usable, he grows vegetables in containers, or buys them from other farmers to sell on.

In August 2013, Goducate partnered with Project Luke Foundation to offer some medical help to people around the Goducate center in Laguna, Philippines. This partnership with Project Luke Foundation was firmed up last November, Goducate signed a partnership with the Foundation and with Interchemex, a pharmaceutical company in the Philippines, to serve the community through helping them with their health needs.

Within weeks of signing the partnership, a session was conducted at the Goducate Training Center Laguna on December 22, 2014. It catered to those who had been affected by Typhoon Glenda (in July) as well as some people from other villages. More than 350 people attended the clinic. The volunteers at the event included local health workers, staff from the Philippines National Police Force in our municipality, as well as the students receiving bursaries from Goducate.

Then on January 3 this year, we conducted another session in the town of Calamba, about 45 minutes away from us. Again, members of the police force helped out. In this area there are about 100 informal family settlers. Most of the children and young people are not attending school.

Because so many of the children in the area are undernourished, and because of the poor state of health of the elderly, we shall be conducting monthly clinics there, as well as a feeding program for the children..

Goducate has started 2015 with an ambitious project. It aims to extend its helping hand to 400 new barangays (villages, districts, or wards) in Panay (an island in the Western Visayas group and on which the Goducate Training Center is situated) and Leyte (an Eastern Visayas island that was particularly badly hit by Supertyphoon Haiyan in 2013 and where Goducate did some relief work). Such an aim might seem impossible, but only by dreaming big for the less privileged Filipinos are we able to improve their present status. This project is called CDWs [community development workers] for the Barangays.

CDWs for the Barangays (CFB) is a six-month long project that kicked off on Feb 1. Ten groups of Goducate CDWs have been deployed to the island of Leyte and to the following towns on Panay: San Miguel, Oton, Alimodian, Tigbauan, Leon, Concepcion, Car-Bal-Es (Carles, Balasan and Estancia), Lemery, and Capiz. The target barangays will receive free health check-ups and health education. This health-education drive will cover the following:

I. For adults:
a) Blood-pressure checks and a hypertension-information drive
b) Random blood-sugar checks and a diabetes-information drive
c) A moringa-awareness and moringa-powder-making seminar

II. For Children
a)Good hygiene practices such as toothbrushing and handwashing
b) Checks on nutritional status, using World Health Organization Child Growth Standards for children aged 6 and under, and Body Mass Index for older children

This big project requires much in the way of materials such as toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap, for which we will be glad to have sponsors.

*Our guest writer is Joanna De Leon, a community development worker