In June last year a girl’s workshop was set up at the Goducate Children’s Home in Cambodia. Initially it was used to teach girls how to bake. Not only were they girls baking for the birthday parties at the Home, but they also later began to bake for the Rawlings Institute, a training center, thus earning some income for the Home.
More recently they have been learning to sew. After a spell of the learning the basics of sewing, they have embarked on a project to sew T-shirts. They plan to sew 100 T-shirts to be given to the needy in the neighboring communities. These are communities that the children and the staff from the Home visit regularly to teach English.
Learning the basics of sewingT-shirt for neighboring community
In August 2013, Goducate partnered with Project Luke Foundation to offer some medical help to people around the Goducate center in Laguna, Philippines. This partnership with Project Luke Foundation was firmed up last November, Goducate signed a partnership with the Foundation and with Interchemex, a pharmaceutical company in the Philippines, to serve the community through helping them with their health needs.
Within weeks of signing the partnership, a session was conducted at the Goducate Training Center Laguna on December 22, 2014. It catered to those who had been affected by Typhoon Glenda (in July) as well as some people from other villages. More than 350 people attended the clinic. The volunteers at the event included local health workers, staff from the Philippines National Police Force in our municipality, as well as the students receiving bursaries from Goducate.
Then on January 3 this year, we conducted another session in the town of Calamba, about 45 minutes away from us. Again, members of the police force helped out. In this area there are about 100 informal family settlers. Most of the children and young people are not attending school.
Because so many of the children in the area are undernourished, and because of the poor state of health of the elderly, we shall be conducting monthly clinics there, as well as a feeding program for the children..
Site of clinic held in CalambaTaking a medical history
Illiteracy in rural areas is one of the major concerns in the Philippines. Many Filipinos do not have a chance of going to school for their basic education, or they have to leave school early, because of poverty or lack of schools and teachers in their communities.
Goducate’s mission is to Go and Educate people who otherwise have no access to education, so that they can escape lives of hopelessness and uselessness. In Laguna Goducate has been helping people who have not finished their schooling to complete it through the Philippines Department of Education Alternative Learning System (ALS).
ALS is a parallel learning system in the Philippines that provides a practical option to the existing formal system of instruction. It includes both non-formal and formal sources of knowledge and skills. Through ALS, Filipinos have the chance to access complete basic education in a mode that fits their distinct situations and needs. Its programs are modular and flexible. Learning can take place anytime, anywhere, depending on the convenience and availability of the learner.
On Jan 20-22, the Goducate Training Center in Iloilo partnered with the Department of Education’s Bureau of Alternative Learning System (BALS) to run a three-day training on ALS. The training was attended by 69 participants composed of Goducate community development workers, the new batch of Goducate trainees, and some members of the San Miguel community whom Goducate has helped. The participants received a certificate of completion and are now officially recognized as ALS facilitators.
With our community development workers now certified as ALS facilitators, Goducate Training Center is hopeful that more poor rural communities in the Philippines will be reached and offered the gift of free and convenient access to education.
ALS trainersNewly qualified facilitators with their certificates
*Our guest writer is Joanna De Leon, a Goducate volunteer
