The Goducate Training Center (GTC) in Iloilo trains people to be community development workers — ie, people who go out to needy communities, to identify their needs, and to identify leaders within the community who can lead projects that Goducate sets up to meet needs. The community development workers also have to be very hands-on in the projects they help to set up, and in the kinds of help they offer to individuals.
The trainees get their practical training in the villages around GTC. At the moment they are in 10 of the surrounding villages. The help they offer ranges from chopping up firewood for or giving massages to very old people, to screening for hypertension, to helping children catch up with school work through regular remedial classes, to training people in simple livelihood skills, to agricultural projects such as backyard farming or pig rearing.
One of the livelihood projects was training in massage. In one of the villages 4 people have been trained how to give massages. Another livelihood skill being taught is how to make choco-balls and yema (a Filipino caramel candy made with egg yolks and condensed milk) with moringa (a plant with many nutrients) for sale in schools. The recipe for including moringa in yema is still being tweaked to get the right taste and quality.
Chopping firewood for an old ladyChecking blood pressureMaking choco-balls
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.
Damaged schoolhouseDamaged community clinicDesign of Goducate Tent School
Dr. Paul Yew Hua Choo is the founder and chairman of Goducate Limited, a Singapore-based not-for-profit organization with projects in nine Asian countries that include China, Cambodia, Malaysia, Mynmar, India, Indonesia, Laos, Philippines, and Vietnam. Goducate is coined from two words, “ Go and Educate”. Its avowed purpose is to help needy Asians help themselves.
Born in Singapore on 29 July 1947, Dr. Choo obtained his elementary and secondary education from the Anglo-Chinese School. He graduated from the Medical Faculty, University of Singapore (renamed National University of Singapore) and qualified as a medical doctor in 1971. He was conferred with honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from Bob Jones University, South Carolina, USA in 1998.
