Category: Philippines

On June 10 the Goducate Training Center (GTC) in Iloilo, Philippines, took in a new batch of students, who will be trained to be community development workers. These 42 trainees, 24 ladies and 18 men, come from different parts of the Philippines, except for 1, who is from China. They will undergo 6 months’ training in teaching English, in agriculture, in children’s education, and in community work.

They started off with an orientation week. One of their early struggles was homesickness. However, they learned to adjust and adapt with the help of their fellow trainees and GTC staff. A day’s outing on the beach before the “real stuff” enabled them to get to know each other through fun and fellowship and team-building activities.

Two days were allotted for community tours to see the places where they will be working in during their training and to talk to the people there. These tours gave them a glimpse of the culture and the potential needs of these communities. These visits also brought out the passion of these trainees to help the needy—the kind of heart GTC wants in our community development workers. They were able to shrug off the muddy roads they had to walk along during this rainy season by singing songs and enjoying each other’s company.

Some of the trainees have been struggling with a change of their body clocks to meet their daily routines that include cleaning their dorms, cooking, serving food, and dishwashing, but they do have some free time to read or to watch the news on TV and to use the recreational facilities. During weekends they have been helping GTC laborers with gardening, housekeeping, landscaping, guest relations, and work in the restaurant and canteen. The latter few activities are associated with GTC’s attempts to make the center self-sufficient by opening its facilities to paying guests

Another struggle for the trainees is to speak only in English, and not revert to Filipino dialects. One trainee, who declared his desire to improve his English and to be corrected whenever he makes a mistake, has inspired the rest to make an effort to speak English. This is important because the ability to communicate well in English could be important when they are posted to a foreign country. For those who are fluent, teaching English could be a major part of their work when they are sent out as community development workers.

At the end of last year, when Goducate in Laguna, the Philippines, started helping people find work making garments, there were only three women in the area who had their own sewing machines, and they could not meet the demand from the factory for school uniforms. Subsequently, we bought four high-speed sewing machines, which were allocated to others who could sew, for them to make uniforms.

Recently we bought two more—a high-speed machine, as well as a “5-threads” machine, which can be used for more elaborate work than school uniforms. This time the beneficiary is a man. He used to work in Saudi Arabia making garments, and now wishes to remain in the Philippines with his family.

We will be buying a few more machines, which will be used for training purposes. We have been helping people who were badly affected by the floods caused last August by the severe monsoons known as “typhoon” Habagat. The plan is to train some of the women affected by these floods to earn a livelihood through sewing.