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Carrying a precious cargo of text books to Sabah Literacy Centers

On our recent trip to Sabah, the twelve members of our team carried a precious cargo of donated text books for our literacy centers. Each one was assigned to carry the maximum load allowed by the budget airline. These were no ordinary books for recreational reading but were brand new “outdated” editions of text books donated by PanPac Educational publishers of Singapore.

When our Goducate staff opened the bags of books, they were so excited that they spent hours “checking out” the books. The verdict: “This is a treasure. Let’s start a primary school for the kids!”

For the past year and a half, Goducate has been busy getting literacy and numeracy into the kampongs, but it is definitely time to move on to giving the kids more than just literacy and numeracy.

Within 4 days of receiving the books, our staff had submitted a plan to start a Pilot Primary 1 to Primary 3 program for our 1st kampong center. It was a simple plan that involved training the capable local teachers (mostly mothers of the students) to use the text books to teach. The only bottle-neck to this plan is a sufficient supply of textbooks. The total number of children enrolled in Sabah Goducate centers already number over 1000.

Let’s hope that we can get other kind publishers and donors to supply more precious cargo, so that Goducate can help Asians help themselves.

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Sabah Learning Centers change entire communities

Each time I visit our Sabah learning centers, I’m not only impressed with the transformation of the students but also with how entire communities are transformed.

The most marked change is seen in the community where we started our first learning center (for reasons of security, I will just call our centers by numbers rather than by their names). Two years ago, when I first visited this village it was filthy. There was garbage everywhere. And as I walked through the village, I saw ladies gambling in the verandahs of their broken down houses and unruly filthy children playing in the dirt. The people looked at me in silence and suspicion. I was probably the first foreigner to visit their community.

Last week, as I entered the village, it was as if I had entered the wrong village. The village was clean and tidy. The filthy playground was now totally cemented with nice basketball posts at either end. In that playground was the bright red school house. Around the playground, some of the houses that used to be gambling dens are now used for “spillover classrooms.” This time I saw no evidence of gambling. Some of the gambling den operators are now teachers. In fact, the principal of this 1st center used to be a lottery seller.

As I stood outside one of the classrooms and saw the little slippers of the school kids neatly placed outside, I realized that these little kids had learned the precious lesson of discipline. As I entered the neat tidy classroom and saw the kids diligently writing on their little desks, I bent over to take a closer look at their penmanship and then I heard my fellow-visitor say to me “Their writing is better than ours!”

I could hardly contain my emotions as I thought how this little Goducate learning center had changed an entire community!

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Sabah Goducate Learning Centers double their enrolment in 2 months!

Just 9 weeks ago, when I visited our Goducate Learning Centers in Sabah we had about 500 students enrolled (it’s impossible to give exact figures even though we register our students because parents sneak in additional kids all the time and most of our classrooms do not have walls to keep out additional kids!)

Last week week when I visited Sabah again, I heard that the present enrolment is over 1100 students – and expanding by the day. It’s just too painful to turn away mums and their children who have walked an hour in the hot sun!

Goducate had earlier set a target of 1500 students by the end of 2010 but last week we had to re-set our target to 2500 student in 10 centers by the end of this year – if funds are available. There is no shortage of children who want to learn to read and write and no shortage of mums who are willing to be trained to teach their own children. The bottle-neck is funds to pay for school supplies, teacher training, teacher allowances, visas, etc.

2500 students sounds a lot but it is really a drop in the bucket because it is estimated that there possibly 500,000 children who are unable to attend school because they are “undocumented aliens” from war-torn southern Philippines. This is possibly one of the largest unrecognized “refugee” (for want of a better word) groups in the world. Half a million children who grow up without education or discipline will definitely be huge social problem for their host country – and eventually for the neighbouring countries.

Let’s do our part to help these poor people to help themselves.

Goducate believes that every child deserves a decent education and a decent start in life!