Goducate … Go And Educate! – Page 64 – Helping Asians Help Themselves

2015-01-022015-01-07

GTC Graduation

Dec 19, 2014, saw the graduation of the 5th batch of trainees attending the Goducate Training Center (GTC) in Iloilo. These 30 community development workers (17 ladies and 13 men) successfully completed 6 months of training to prepare them to serve Asian communities, especially needy communities.

This batch was unique in several ways:

Firstly, unlike previous batches that were trained by both university lecturers and community workers, the teachers and trainers for this batch were all seasoned active community workers.

Secondly, this batch was exposed to much more community work than previous batches. The large amount of real-life opportunities for these trainees was largely the result of Super Typhoon Haiyan’s destruction of thousands of villages.

Thirdly, unlike previous intakes, which were limited to college graduates, this batch included non-graduates who had shown an interest in serving the poor.

Fourthly, this batch took in 8 trainees from Sabah, all of whom were “undocumented aliens” (aka illegal refugees) who had fled from southern Philippines to Sabah. All these 8 trainees had been through Goducate Learning Centers in Sabah.

Every one of the 4 above “firsts” was assessed to be good and will be continued in subsequent batches. The next batch starts training this month.

About half of the graduates of this batch have volunteered to continue serving the poor villages that they were assigned to during their training. A few are planning to serve other needy Asian communities and are in the process of getting their passports.

We are proud of these 30 newly graduated CDWs. We believe that they will keep up the good name of Goducate Training Center wherever they serve and continue to help needy Asians help themselves.

2014-12-26

Goducate staff in Laguna working towards self-sustainability

Goducate’s tagline is Helping Asians Help Themselves. So Goducate has to walk the talk and try to be as self-sustainable as possible.

Some Goducate workers in Laguna have been supplementing their allowances through different livelihood projects, such as through soapmaking, through producing vermicompost, or through giving music lessons. Those making vermicompost have been producing about 50 sacks of such compost a month (250 kg/ month), but are now hoping to scale up production to meet the orders from a client who wants 200 sacks a month. Scaling up would mean having the capital for the raw materials.

Recently two new livelihood projects were started. Both produce cakes for local schools and food outlets.

In October Jonatan (who started the soapmaking project several years back) and his wife started producing home-made rice cakes. Starting humbly with a capital of 100 peso ($2.25) to produce 45 pieces, production has reached 320 pieces a day. Not only does this work give the couple a weekly profit equivalent to about half the basic minimum weekly wage for a Filipino, but also there is enough work for them to outsource some of the production to a few Goducate colleagues.

Also in October, another staff member, Arjay, and his wife Nancy started making cakes from sweet purple yam. The idea of working with purple yam came to Arjay when he noticed the purple color of a 100 peso note. 100 peso was the only money they couple had left at that time. With a capital of 150 peso, they produced 10 pieces. Now they are producing an average of 40 pieces a day and earn nearly half the basic minimum weekly wage for a Filipino.
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Goducate income-generating projects are geared not only to our staff. 5 of our sewing machines are being used by the community to produce 45 dozen elementary-school uniforms per week, whereas machinists at our sewing center in town have been trying to fulfil a 2-month order for 300 sets of uniforms for a private universities.

2014-12-122014-12-16

Goducate’s Happy Happy English program is featured in newspapers on anniversary of Little India riot

Monday Dec 8 was the first anniversary of the riot in Little India that prompted Goducate to set up the Happy Happy English program in foreign workers’ dormitories in Singapore. Little India is a district in Singapore where Indian shops are concentrated and where foreign workers from the Indian subcontinent congregate on their days off.

Over the weekend and on Monday itself, Singapore newspapers commemorated the anniversary with reports on how the riot developed, the repercussions of the riot (such as the restrictions on sale and consumption of liquor in the area, and the restrictions on movement of foreign workers into the area), the findings of the committee of inquiry, and how foreign workers and locals have responded to the riot.

Two newspapers reported on Goducate’s Happy Happy English program. They reported on how the volunteers teach the workers functional English, but more importantly, as the name of the program implies, bring some happiness to these people by becoming their friends. These foreign workers have to leave home to live here in quarters that are generally in isolated parts of the island, and to work here for very long hours just to pay off debts and make ends meet at home. An equally important point made in the reports is how the program has helped to dispel some of the misconceptions that Singaporeans have about foreign workers—namely, that they are a group to be feared, when in fact they are very normal people like any of us.

Happy Happy English has so far been operating in three dormitories. We hope to bring happiness to workers in other dormitories as well.