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Sustainable backyard farming – Yard long beans

On my recent visit to the Goducate Training Center in Iloilo, Philippines, I was surprised at how large our vegetables looked.

The average bitter gourd was about a foot (25 cm) long. The okras (ladies fingers) were over 6 inches (12 cm) long. But what really surprised me were the long beans. I’d never seen such long long beans before. They were about a yard (almost one meter) long and thick as my thumb! They were called yard-long beans.

I thought the phrase “yard long” was just a nick-name for our large produce until we sat down for a Goducate meeting one night and was told that one of our volunteer agricultural advisors was away in Thailand teaching the Thais how to grow yard-long beans. It was then that I realized that this was a special variety of long beans.


On further research I realized that this was not the usual variety of long beans that I’d seen in most supermarkets but was actually a different variety altogether. It was a variety of cow-pea.

I discovered that it is a fast-grower. In less than 60 days of sowing on our earth-worm produced organic fertilizer, we can pluck and pluck and pluck these beans for the next one year!! These beans can grow several inches per day!

I discovered that it is extremely tasty!! And that it is nutritious – and is full of proteins, which the poor lack.

It is exciting that Goducate can help put veg@tables for Asia’s needy!

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Helping the helpless to have dreams


What is a gold coated medal worth to you? It depends on the event where you earned it, others will say. The athletes who gave their time, talents and life to train to compete in the sport they excel in know the elation that a medal brings.

To others who compete in academic challenges, the feelings would be somehow the same.

To a kid who never once dreamed that she could really go to school and learn to read and write, earning a certificate as proof that she passed was truly awesome. But to top it all, getting a medal for belonging to the top 10 of around 200 kids is really something. After all for these kids in Sabah, their parents thought it was impossible for their kids to learn. Not that they did not want to, but because they are undocumented kids.


This boy is Badawi. Ten months ago, he cannot read nor write until the learning center opened at his kampong. For most of the boys his age, they would shy away from the center because they feel that they are too big already to learn. Not Badawi. He goes to work in the morning and attends the afternoon class. Last time when we had dentists friends visiting, he was a very much reliable dental assistant. We knew that time that another world aside from his kampong opened in his mind. That he could be someone other than the boy who gets paid lifting heavy things or washing pots and pans.

It was another milestone when his efforts paid off. He passed the Basic Literacy Program and was one of those on top of his class. His teacher was very proud, and of course his parents too. But I think no one was happier than Badawi that day. He knew this was just a beginning of another road ahead.

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256 students pass basic literacy exam in Sabah

Last night when I went to bed, I couldn’t shake off from my mind the pictures of those mothers with their kids. We just finished the last round of evaluation tests to determine whether who among the children attending our learning centers have passed the Basic Literacy Program. Last May, we had 60 passers.
We had a team of volunteer-evaluators composed of two primary teachers from the Philippines who designed the tests and one who used to be a school principal for seven years in the Philippines before she taught in an International school in Thailand for the last five years.

They stayed with us for 3-4 weeks, visiting the centers in the kampongs, observing the students and our teachers.

We were all waiting for the big day, when the tests will be given. And indeed the big day came.

Plus another bigger day, when the results yielded 256 passers for our second batch.

After 10 months, two hundred fifty six were certified readers who can be accepted to our Primary Program this coming January 2011. Should they pursue it. Should their circumstances allow them. Or should they rise above their circumstances.

As I am writing this, one kampong is being demolished. We don’t know where the kids will be. But one thing we are sure, once they can locate the learning center, they will find their way.

Just like the kids who were awarded their certificates after passing the program.

I looked at the pictures again. I looked at the face of the proud Moms, what was inside their hearts were written all over their faces. Their kids will not be like them. They will have a chance.

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