Category: Livelihood Training

Poverty due to unemployment is a serious problem in the Philippines, so Goducate provides training to help Filipinos get recognized government certificates in livelihood skills.

Last year the Goducate Training Center in Iloilo became a partner of the Philippines Technical Education and Services Development Authority (TESDA), and enabled 21 people to get their TESDA certificates in housekeeping.

This year Goducate is helping to train 54 others to get their TESDA housekeeping certificates. The training is being done in collaboration with World-class Competency Unlimited and the local government unit of Alimodian. The trainees are residents from 5 municipalities and 20 barangays in District 2 of Iloilo. People with housekeeping qualifications can apply for jobs in hotels and on cruise ships.

Goducate is also training 6 men for TESDA certificates in automotive skills in barangay Balantang, Jaro, Iloilo Ciity. The training is being done in collaboration with Techno Development Institute and Assessment, Inc.

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

In July 2014, the Goducate Training Center (GTC) in Iloilo, Philippines, started to prepare youths and adults for the Accreditation and Equivalency program of the Alternative Learning System (ALS). The ALS is a Philippines Department of Education program for people who have not finished their schooling. Those who pass the ALS at the high-school (secondary) level can qualify for tertiary education. GTC embarked on this program in partnership with a local school.

Angelica Amodia comes from East Malaysia. Her parents are Filipinos from Mindanao. To escape the civil strife and poverty in their province, they went to East Malaysia, where the family lived as undocumented aliens. As such, the children were not entitled to state education.

Angelica learnt literacy, numeracy, and had some basic schooling at a Goducate learning center in East Malaysia, after which she helped to teach others at one of the centers. However, she wanted to further her education. So she returned to the Philippines to undergo the ALS at GTC. She passed the examination at the secondary level and now, aged 19, is a freshman at the Northern Iloilo Polytechnic State College in Lemery, Iloilo, taking up Hotel and Restaurant Management, but she plans to switch to Education because she has realized that her passion is in teaching.

Her hope is that when she graduates she will be able to help her family and community. Meanwhile, she spends her spare time as a volunteer in Goducate’s community work in Lemery.

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

In March this year, 7 out of 41 Goducate scholars in the 2014-15 batch graduated from various universities in the Philippines. This Goducate Scholarship Program in Laguna, sponsored by a Goducate supporter, pays for the tuition fees of students from very low income families who are in the Goducate music program. In return the scholar helps in the music program as well as in Goducate community programs.

One of these graduates was Kimberly Cabalfin, who was orphaned at age 10. She lives with her aunts and grandmother, and with their help she finished her high-school education but they could not support her through college. Kimberly plays the violin and qualified for a Goducate scholarship. As a Goducate scholar she helped children to play the recorder.

Kimberly graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Secondary Education, with a major in Technology and Livelihood Education (TLE), from Laguna State Polytechnic University in Los Banos. She was a Goducate scholar throughout her 4 years in college.

She is now a TLE teacher in Calamba, Laguna, teaching grade 8-10 students. With this job she is able to help her aunts and grandmother with household expenses and to give her grandmother a monthly allowance.

Kimberly also continues to help Goducate whenever we have a youth camp and whenever the music department has an event.

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