Goducate … Go And Educate! – Page 146 – Helping Asians Help Themselves

2012-05-042012-05-08

Harvesting vegetables at the Goducate Children’s Home Cambodia

As part of the children’s livelihood training at the Goducate Children’s Home in Preynob Cambodia, a portion of the land was set aside for a small organic farm. A week ago, several visitors had the privilege of helping to harvest vegetables which included squash, gourds, eggplants and chilli for the dining table.

For these city-dwellers who are repeat visitors to the Children’s Home, it was fun to go back to nature, harvest these organic vegetables and then enjoy them for lunch an hour later!

aIMG_1039 — Lisa, our American visitor, harvesting vegetables

aIMG_1043 — Wilson harvesting the eggplants

The mango trees were in season as well, and the company also enjoyed raw mango salad for lunch. Ric, our expert agriculturist from the Goducate Training Center in the Philippines, is planning a visit to the Children’s Home in the following months to share his expertise with the Home adminstrators. It is our hope that the farm will grow and help the Home become self-sustaining with home-grown crops, as well as serve as another viable avenue to teach Cambodians how to help themselves.

2012-05-012012-04-25

Goducate trainees learn to help themselves

Goducate Training Center (GTC) in Iloilo, The Philippines, has just begun its eight month full-time training of its community development workers (CDWs). A good part of their training is in agriculture, because many of them will be working with poor rural or semi-urban communities where malnutrition is a endemic problem.

A key principle of GTC training is that it is practical and hands-on, so that our graduates can really be useful to the communities that they work with. And a key philosophy of Goducate is that we teach “Asians to help themselves.”

Therefore, our trainees will each be given a plot of land to grow food. The food that the trainees grow will, we hope, provide 90% of their food needs. The key performance index (KPI) for our agriculture consultant and trainees is that they collectively produce 90% of their total food consumption at the end of the year. In this year, our trainees will be first learning to “help themselves” before they go out to teach communities to “help themselves.”

Onions2012_04 — Onions grown in garbage bags

On my recent trip to GTC, I will pleased to see the place turning into a large productive farm. The trees that we had planted two years ago are now beginning to bear fruit. The vegetable fields are filled with lush vegetables. The tilapia fish are multiplying.

GTC must be able to support its own faculty, staff and trainees with food, otherwise how can we tell poor farmers that they should support their own families?!

Helping Asians to help themselves, must first begin in GTC!

2012-04-272012-04-25

Liz Poey’s friends eat and laugh for Goducate

What nicer way to celebrate a birthday than to eat and laugh with family and friends. So that’s how Liz Poey decided to spend her 60th birthday. The thing with Liz is that she doesn’t always do things the conventional way. For this event she made her guests dig into their pockets for the pleasure of attending the dinner. And deep they had to dig, with places priced at $150 to $500 per person. Yet within a few weeks seats at all 29 tables were sold out. What Liz was doing was to raise awareness and support for Goducate again—for a couple of years ago she had channelled most of the proceeds from the sale of her autobiography to Goducate. Goducate is very grateful to her and her chums for their extreme generosity that went beyond the price of the seats.

Liz herself generated the laughter with her stand-up comedy show, inducing guests to laugh with and at her. She is no novice at being a stand-up comedian, the 60th birthday show (Endorphin Rush 2) being her second. For Endorphin Rush 2 most of the humorous stories were derived from her life as teacher, school principal, and cancer patient. Those who missed hearing the jokes live or want to share them with others can order a DVD of the event through Liz’s website.

A student at the National Junior College in Singapore when Liz was a teacher there, and who is now the chief executive officer of MHC Asia Group, decided to add to the interest of the evening in a novel way. He announced that for every “Like” received on the MHC Asia Group facebook page, his company would contribute $60 (up to a maximum of $20,000) to buy a van for Goducate projects in Laguna.

"Queen Elizabeth Poey", who shares the same birthday with Queen Elizabeth II.

Liz is a marvelous example of what Goducate would like its recipients to be. Once they have helped themselves, we would like them to go on to help others, so that Goducate becomes a movement.

Liz Poey handing the contributions collected to Goducate founder, Paul Choo

Despite her cancer Liz has directed her energies to helping not only Goducate but also cancer patients and animal welfare. We wish Liz many more years of health and such worthy work.