Philippines – Page 76 – Goducate … Go And Educate!

2012-10-262012-10-26

Goducate Training Center prepares for 2013

This year’s trainees at Goducate Training Center in Iloilo, Philippines, will be graduating in December. There are almost 50 of them who would have finished their 6-month training by Dec 14.

About 20 of them will be serving as community development workers in China, Indonesia, and Cambodia. Another 5 of them will join Goducate Training Center as staff. And the rest will return to serve in their communities in different parts of the Philippines.

In 2013, Goducate Training Center will be taking in 2 batches of students. The first batch will be trained from January to May to be teachers of English. The will undergo courses such as TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language), accent neutralization, counselling, community work, cross-cultural studies, and mentoring. After completing their training, they will be sent to needy communities in other Asian countries to serve as English teachers.

The second batch of trainees will be trained from June to December to be community development workers. In addition to the training that the English teachers will receive, they will receive training in agriculture. Since many of the communities that they will serve are backward rural communities struggling to feed themselves, an understanding of agriculture is vital.

To prepare for 2013, Goducate Training Center has built additional dormitories and a mess-hall. The ladies’ dormitory will be able to house about 70 trainees and the men’s dormitory about 35. The mess-hall will seat about 70 trainees for meals.

As Goducate’s work expands, the demand for English teachers and community development workers continues to grow. Goducate Training Center must continue to produce enough workers to help needy Asians help themselves.

2012-10-232012-10-23

Leadership Training at Goducate Training Center

Last week Goducate Training Center (GTC) held its twice-yearly Leadership Training for young people interested in learning to serve their communities.

80 young people from the Visayas (the “central” part of the Philippine islands) attended the sessions on topics such as “The Leader and the World”, “The Mission of the Leader”, and “The Leader under conflict.” The most interesting and beneficial part of their training is their daily practical sessions serving in the communities around Goducate Training Center. This gives them a real taste of the joys and struggles of community service.

It is our hope that after these 5 days of training, all the participants will be able to serve their communities more effectively, and that some of them will be led to consider being full-time community development workers (CDWs) and enroll for the full-time 6-month CDW course at the Goducate Training Center.

We need to train more CDWs to help Asians help themselves.

2012-10-192012-10-20

Goducate Model Farm helps the community

It’s been nearly a year since the extended Goducate Model Farm in Laguna went into operation. The aim of the model farm is to train community workers in organic ways of planting vegetables, in various forms of crop production, such as container gardening and hydroponics, in various forms of composting, and in farm management. These workers would then be able to help needy communities produce their own crops.

From about mid-year, there has been a series of harvests of the range of vegetables grown at the farm, as well as of papayas and bananas. What is not used for feeding the staff and for Goducate’s feeding program in the community has been sold either locally or in Manila. Staff enjoy some profit-sharing, and the rest of the income goes towards covering the expenses of the farm.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA — Residents in Blu-Paong prepare beds for their crops

The Goducate Model Farm also serves as a place of training and of employment of some out-of-school youth. Two who are employed as cleaners are being trained in vermicomposting, and they have benefited from profit-sharing from sales of the vermicompost. Two others have been working part-time, while waiting to take up a course in technical work for TESDA (the Philippines Technical Education and Skills Development Authority) qualifications. 15-20 school-going children also help out at the farm, to earn some money for their schooling or to contribute to their families’ income.

From the start, the Goducate Model Farm has encouraged individual families to grow vegetables in their backyard for their own consumption (in Goducate’s veg@table project). This project was started in Dayap, a relocation village from victims in Manila of the 2009 Typhoon Ondoy. It has not been well taken up largely because of lack of running water in that village.

A few weeks ago another farming project was started in Blu-Paong, a small village where the majority of people are
unemployed. Instead of farming in individual backyards, Goducate is helping the villagers to set up a communal farm, a small replica of the Goducate farm, to give the community food for their own consumption as well as a means of livelihood.

The training that staff from the Goducate Model Farm extends also to schools. Recently, they were at an elementary school in Tranca, to teach farming methods to the students and teachers.

Several of Goducate workers and volunteers are now at the Goducate Training Center in Iloilo being trained to be community development workers. When they return, the model farm should be able to extend its work more widely into the community.