Not long ago we reported that the Goducate Children’s Home in Prey Nob, Cambodia has started their livelihood self-sustainability projects with tilapia farming and the rearing of goats and chickens.
The chicken hatchery was set up with the help of a generous sponsor, and the first 200 chicken reached the desired weight of 1.2 kg last week. A supermarket chain has agreed to sell the chicken for the Home.
Defeathering and preparing the chicken for sale to the supermarket
The staff and some of the older children at the Home had a busy weekend preparing the chicken for distribution to the supermarket.
Read more about the Goducate Children’s Home in our newsletter 1/2011.
There are now 17 Goducate Literacy Centers in Sabah, serving about 2000 poor children who do not have the opportunity to attend school.
Children at these centers learn phonics (literacy) and numeracy. The unique feature of Goducate’s centers is that most of the teachers are mothers from their own communities, or former Goducate students who are now serving as teachers. Another unique feature is that most of the school buildings are built by the community.
The literacy and numeracy program has been very successful and most of our students are able to read phonetically – in English and Malay – after a few months. Goducate is now focusing on how to help our students to earn a livelihood.
As a start a few sewing machines were bought and young girls are taught how to sew. Their first project was to sew simple satchels (school bags) to carry their school books. These budding entrepreneurs bought cloth and sewed bags, which were then sold for 2 Malaysian Ringgit each – earning a healthy 1.5 Ringgit profit per bag!
7-year-old Goducate student who sews her own clothes
The recent visit by the ieatishootipost blogging community resulted in the donation of another sewing machine and a hemming-machine. These have come in time to sew dresses for the coming Muslim festival.
Tilapia raising is not the only livelihood project that the Goducate Children’s Home is embarking upon. Goat raising is also a good livelihood project. Different species of goats have to be raised for different purposes. Although we would like to raise various species, we are at present focusing on producing organic-meat goats.
To maintain success with this project, we have started seeding various kinds of legumes, to be able to provide the animals with a complete plant food. In about a year’s time we will buy several female goats and one male.
Chicken rearing is quite a difficult project that requires more care and monetary investment. However, our administrator’s experience with poultry has encouraged us to start breeding chickens as egg layers and as meat for sale.
