Goducate believes in helping Asians to help themselves. Therefore, Goducate projects are usually community projects.
Goducate does not believe in playing the role of a charitable Santa Claus bearing gifts because this type of help breeds laziness. Worse than laziness, it robs the recipients of their dignity as useful human beings.
I was so glad when I visited our Sabah learning centers last week to see how the community was actively participating in educating their own children. When I arrived at our first center, I was glad to see that a nice coat of bright red paint had been added to the center. I was told that the parents had done this on their own accord.
As I sat to watch the welcome program that they had prepared for us that day, I was told that all the decorations were done by the community and the school. I was told that as present building was too small to hold the student body of 400 students, different households had volunteered to open their houses to serve as additional classrooms. I was especially proud to see the local mums teaching their own children – using the teaching techniques and materials that we had given to them. They looked just like the teachers in any other school in the city!
As I went to each of the 5 centers, I saw how each community was actively participating in building and running of the learning centers. In our 2nd Center, I saw that the community had added a new wall to their previously totally “open-concept” school house! They had even extended their school house with zinc sheets taken from a recently torn down nearby building. And the dads had made many more simple desks for the students.
I was so glad to see that the Goducate philosophy of helping poor Asians help themselves was no more just a dream among these “undocumented aliens” of Sabah but had become a reality.