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Sabah volunteer teachers must first be purveyor of dreams

During our meeting with the Sabah volunteer teachers, I shared with them the importance of dreaming big. These people had been so down-trodden by their circumstances, so stuck in their little villages and so busy just surviving that they had given up hope of ever getting out of their miserable situation. Basically, they were content just to survive. But Goducate believes that they were created for more than mere survival. Goducate believes that every person should be given the opportunity to fulfil his potential.

Over a dozen people from Singapore had come on this trip to visit the Goducate learning centers. The teachers had the chance to meet these Singaporeans. So I decided to share with our teachers some of the real life stories of these Singaporeans.

I told the teachers about a lady in our group from Singapore – whom they had all seen – how that she herself was unable to attend school when she was a little girl because her parents were too poor. I told them how she cried and cried until a relative of hers took pity on her and financed her schooling. She graduated as a pharmacist, married a doctor, became head of a large health-care company and is now chairman of another health-care company. Today, this dear lady is now one of the most committed supporters of Goducate – helping children to get the chance that she had! As I told the story, I could hear sniffles all around the room and I could see the teachers wiping their tears. One of the teachers who was sitting just by me with a little child in her hand had to get up and run away from the group because she couldn’t hold back her emotions! This young mum has eight children.

I told the group about another one in the Singaporean group who was a kampong boy who was now a successful doctor who started one of Singapore’s largest managed health-care organizations. I told them how he showed little promise in his early days but worked hard to overcome every obstacle to become a success. I told them how he too was now the major supporter of Goducate and was helping hundreds of poor children to fulfil their God-given potential. By now everyone was choking with emotion – including the narrator!

I ended by encouraging the teachers to dream BIG and to help the children to dream BIG. I reminded them that the greatest poverty was not the lack of money but the lack of hope.

Then I turned to my interpreter – Miss D, a teenager who had never had the opportunity to go to school until we taught her to read and write just over a year ago – and asked her what her dream was and she immediately replied “To be lawyer!” Then I asked another teenager. Miss L, who had also learned to read and write through our phonics program and was now an assistant teacher, and she readily replied “To be a businesswomen!”

Every child is created by God and created in His image. Therefore, every child has an unlimited potential. Goducate believes this!

Goducate wants to help poor Asians help themselves – and the first thing we must share with them is that with God there is hope! Every Goducate volunteer teacher must spread this message!

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Sabah volunteer teachers – seeing a dream fulfilled

Last week I had the opportunity to meet most of the 40 Sabah teachers that Goducate had trained.

Firstly, it was a joy for me to see how many had been trained. When we first started recruiting teachers for training, we had few trainees because these mothers did not believe that they could be teachers. They had never taught before. In fact, most of them had never had a “white-collar” job before. We had to persuade them that we would train any one who had a high-school diploma. We were convinced that the most valuable asset was their desire to help their own kids.

Secondly, it was amazing to see how different they were. I had seen many of them before they became teachers. I had met them in preliminary Goducate “meet-the-mums” meetings where we shared with them our dreams of educating their children. They had come in their simple work clothes – appropriate for their various had manual jobs. But when I met with them last week, they looked like teachers, they talked like teachers and they behaved like teachers. I believe that Goducate gave them more than phonics and maths skills, we gave them back their dignity!

Thirdly, I was so happy to see the unity of the team. They had come from different villages, different tribes, different regions in the Philippines, different religions. When I first met them, they did not trust us, nor did they trust each other. It was basically, every man for himself in their difficult daily struggle to survive. When I met them last week, it was like one big family – just eating, laughing, crying, planning and dreaming together.

As I watched these teachers, I realized that was a dream fulfilled for Goducate and more importantly, it was a dream fulfilled in the lives of these dear teachers!

They were now had the tools to help themselves, their families and their communities!

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Sabah volunteer teachers – a dream team

Tens of thousands of children in Sabah do not have the opportunity to go to school because they are “undocumented aliens” – the children of illegal immigrants from southern Philippines. However, the best possible team of volunteer teachers are now teaching some of these children in simple learning centers. This “dream team” of teachers are the very mothers of these children.

Many of the mothers of these children had the opportunity of going to schools in the Philippines. Many of them have finished high school. However, three decades of fighting in southern Philippines between Muslim secessionists and government troops has devastated that part of the Philippines. To flee the fighting and the poverty, many Filipinos sneaked illegally into Sabah on little boats, where there is peace and jobs. However, as undocumented aliens in Sabah their children have no opportunities to go to school.

As a mother said “In Philippines we can go to school but we have no food. In Sabah we have food but no school.” It is a tough choice but food is a more basic need than education. However, Goducate believes that we can help Asians to help themselves. So we said to these mothers “If your kids can’t go to school, then why don’t you teach them. We will help you to help yourselves!”

Today, after a year and a half, about 40 teachers (mostly mothers) have been trained to teach phonics and arithmetic. It is hard to get a more enthusiastic and motivated group of teachers than mothers who want to teach their own children! They don’t miss a day of training, they don’t come late to their classes, they never miss a day, they stay back to help the slow learners. They are a DREAM team of teachers.

Though they are willing to work for nothing because they want to see their sons, daughters, nephews, nieces and neighbours learn to read and write, Goducate raises support for them because they have to give up other means of livelihood (eg. house-maids, doing laundry, selling lottery tickets) to focus on their students.

It’s so easy to help poor Asians help themselves in Sabah.

All that’s needed is a little organizing, a little encouragement, a little training, some basic school supplies and plenty of LOVE!