Goducate … Go And Educate!

An old friend of mine in Manila called me up one day to ask whether he and his friends could bring some goods for the people Goducate works with in Dayap. This village is a relocation site for the victims of the devastation that Typhoon Ondoy caused in Manila in 2009.

The next day the group travelled 20 miles to distribute 20 boxes of used clothing and 60 kg of rice. The children also received parcels containing stationery donated by the National Bookstore.

Although the people have been given simple houses by the government, many have still to get jobs, and their children’s education was interrupted by the move. In this village Goducate helps the children with tutorials on their schoolwork. Goducate is also running its pilot project on backyard farming here, to help the community put veg@table.

Sandy is a volunteer at our model farm in Laguna. He goes round collecting leftover vegetables for our vermicomposting project. Vermicomposting is the use of a worm called the African night crawler to produce compost. The worm eats waste material and churns out good compost. At our model farm we are are trying out different combinations of waste material to find out what produces the best compost.

Sandy has started his own backyard vegetable garden. Among the vegetables he is growing are bittergourds, sweet peppers, eggplants, and ladies’ fingers. The plan that he has been following is to plant several kinds of vegetables simultaneously but in small quantities. Then the planting is repeated roughly every month, so that there is a continuous harvest of each kind of vegetable.

Sandy works in the Talahiban area. He will soon be teaching the villagers there how to start their own backyard vegetable gardens using this plan.

Goducate hopes that the residents of Talahiban will soon be able to put their own veg@table.