At this year’s summer music workshop we were fortunate to have Elaine Mallari from the Manila Symphony Orchestra come to teach the violin on the first day. She also gave John Ericson, the Goducate Orchestra’s principal cello player, a short lesson.
The 13 students who each received a violin donated by Wolfgang Violin Studio (Singapore) earlier this year when Channel News Asia did a TV programme on the Goducate Orchestra will form our Junior String Orchestra.
Students who are not learning to play an instrument received voice training.
What we still lack are competent teachers in the viola, cello, double bass and clarinet.
Elaine Mallari training the students who will form the Junior String OrchestraJohn Ericson teaching Jerome (last year a guitar student) how to play the celloStudents undergoing voice trainingMariane and Mary Jane practising the clarinet
Goducate held its second summer music workshop last week (May 10-14). The 63 people who registered came from the music and feeding programmes that we hold in several villages. They were taught largely by members of the Goducate Orchestra. This is part of the Goducate philosophy—those who have been taught by Goducate in turn teach others. Many of the teachers at this year’s workshop were teaching an instrument that they had learnt to play at last year’s workshop, while also learning a new instrument this year.
The camp was held in a spa resort whose kind owner does not charge us for the use of the premises for orchestra training. We ferried some of the students back and forth to their villages each day while others camped out at the resort.
Thanks to the generosity of a South African who visited us recently, we were able to add a cello and a double bass to our stock of instruments.
Manuel, who taught the guitar last year, teaching keyboard this yearStudents practicing how to handle the bowPaul, who started at age 6 last year with the recorder, learning to play his quarter-size violin with 5 others.
Goducate Training Center in Iloilo, Philippines has begun training its pilot batch of trainees. For the past 3 weeks, 24 full-time trainees have started learning the basics of agriculture from experienced agricultural experts and the basics of teaching from pedagogic lecturers. These skills will lay the foundation for them as they serve as community workers helping needy communities to feed themselves and educate themselves.
This pilot batch of trainees are all staff of Goducate. We felt that it is best for our own staff to undergo training first, so that they will understand the challenges and struggles that future batches of trainees will undergo. Furthermore, training “insiders” and getting feedback from them will also help us to fine-tune our training program for future batches.
The training is divided into morning classroom sessions, followed by afternoon practical sessions of agricultural work in the fields and weekend practical sessions of teaching youth from the neighboring communities. Since the trainees have to continue to perform their regular Goducate work, their schedules are very heavy. Furthermore, the unusually heavy rains have made field work even more arduous.
Hopefully, some of these trainees will be able to help in training the next batch of trainees, and the lessons learned from this initial training will help the faculty to make necessary adjustments to our future training programs.
Goducate Training Center hopes to train hundreds of workers annually
to help the billions of needy Asians to help themselves.
Trainees being asked to identify the seeds that they will be planting
