Category: Philippines

Goducate recorder player Angelica Dacillo is a grade 6 student in elementary school. At the start of the school year her parents had a problem wondering whether they could afford to send all their 7 school-age children to school. We encouraged them to do so, and helped out by providing Angelica and her sister Christine with notebooks given by Goducate sponsors.

A week into the school term, the chairman of our barangay (village) called Angelica to tell her that she had been selected as a municipal government scholar. She had been selected by the Municipal Mayor Jose Padrid.

When Angelica went with her mother Melinda to the Municipal Mayor’s office to receive a certificate of scholarship (grade 6) for 1 year and a package of school supplies, the Mayor explained to Melinda how Angelica was selected. The Mayor had recalled that there was a group of children playing the recorder at the town’s Christmas celebration last year, and he identified Angelica from photographs of the event.

When they got home, Melinda asked Angelica what she would do with the school supplies, since she already had a set. Angelica said she would like to give them to fellow recorder player Mary Ann. Mary Ann had dropped out of school after the first week of term because she did not have the necessary books. Mary Ann cried with joy on receiving the books, and is now back at school.

13-year-old Matthew Mendoza, a Goducate Orchestra violinist, has received a pleasant surprise at the Mabakan Learning Center, where he teaches the violin to some other children. The mothers of those children there have pooled together to give him 50 peso ($1) an hour for the lessons he gives every Saturday afternoon. The idea is that this money will go towards his studies.

Matthew, who began to learn the violin just over a year ago, is one of the 5 musicians selected during the making of the Channel News Asia program Once Upon a Village to go to Singapore for further training later this year.

His violin students, too, are teachers. They teach other children to play the recorder. All this is in keeping with Goducate philosophy of helping the needy to help themselves—and to help others.

Jason was in a jeep (type of public transport) on his way back from another town, where he had gone to teach the violin at another Goducate center, when he had severe cramps affecting his whole body. He was rushed to hospital, where he was found to be lacking in potassium.

He was discharged after almost 4 hours in the emergency room. But before discharge, the attending physician said that he would waive all charges (consultation as well as medication) if Jason would play the violin for him. Naturally, Jason obliged, and received the rapt attention of the doctors, the nurses, and the patients in the emergency room.

Jason has a follow-up appointment with the doctor in about a week’s time. But it is not for a check-up on Jason. It is for a violin lesson for the doctor and his child!