Helping Asians Help Themselves
Before we had our learning centers, we taught children anywhere we could find space…
But today they can come freely to our learning centers…
Our GD-ALS program helps out of school youth to finish their studies..
Manuel, a former drug user, now enjoys Vermi-culture farming and preparing our vegetable garden.
Last week, our Goducate workers and Goducate volunteers finished installing a hand-pump water system for our model-farm in Laguna, Philippines. (For those city-dwellers who get water from a tap and have never used a hand-pump to get water, a hand-pump water system is one which has a lever that needs to be pumped up and down to get the water to flow. You get a free work-out while getting your water!)
The part of Laguna where our model-farm is situated is famous for its sulphurous hot-water spa-resorts. Our workers were joking that it would be good if we drilled into a hot-water source so that they could enjoy the spa-life of the rich and leisured! However, hot, sulphurous water would be disastrous for our worms (which produce our organic fertilizer) and for the crops which we hope to raise on the farm!
Since our farm is within 10 Km from Mount Makiling where there is a large Geothermal Power Plant our chances of drilling into a hot water source was very high. Most of our neighbours had hot sulphurous water from their hand-pump water systems and had to spend much time and effort to cool their water before using it for their crops or cattle.
As almost all well-drillings over 10 meters resulted in hot water, we were thankful that our drilling to 30 meters produced cool water!!
We now have a good source of water that can be used for our farm and can also be shared with our neighbours.
We are looking forward to the day when beautiful crops of leafy vegetables, brinjals, ladies fingers (okra), long beans, bitter gourds, water-melons will be produced on that farm – all fertilized by the abundant source of organic fertilizers that our worms (African night crawlers) produce.
We are looking to the day that our workers will be self-sufficient in producing food for their families and more importantly setting the example to others in the community that it is possible to use nature’s abundance (plus a little technology and diligence) to produce food for their families.
This is one of Goducate’s ways of helping poor Asians help themselves in this typhoon-prone area of the Philippines.
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A Fourteen year old Arianne Andrade, fulfils her mother’s responsibilities to her younger Brothers and Sisters( 4 of them), when her mother and two other sisters work as house keepers away from home; going back home during the weekend, and her one armed father making charcoal out of cut trees from the mountain.
Making ways to be always at our Saturday basic literacy and learning review with her brothers and sisters, Gina our Volunteer Teacher finds out that she is more than willing to learn.
She told Gina how she was force to stop her 5 grade school studies because of poverty, that her mother and sisters need to work for a living and she must to attend her little brothers and sisters while their father is up in the mountain.
She shares her dream and vision of being a school teacher someday.
But when Gina shared to her about our ALS ( Alternative Learning System), which gives opportunities for the out of school youth) under our Department of Education in Partnership with Goducate Learning Center; she happily showed her interest for study to finish her Elementary Grade.
For two weeks already she had been faithful attending the class in our learning center, and also earning her allowance through our Goducate soap- making livelihood project of Php 2/ per soap, together with two other students.
– Leo, Goducate Representative, Laguna, Philippines.