Several people have asked why we had planned to have nice dormitories and facilities at our Goducate Training Center in Iloilo, Philippines. They rightly wondered why we wanted to “spoil” our Goducate trainees – who were being trained to work in poor communities. Couldn’t they just sleep on the floor in the Multi-Purpose Hall?
It is likely that the first few batches of trainees will indeed sleep on the floor in the Multi-Purpose Hall, until funds are available to build additional facilities.
However, we are hoping eventually to build proper dormitories and recreational facilities so that the Center can be self-supporting. A core philosophy of Goducate is to help Asians help themselves. Therefore, one of the core skills that our trainees will learn at the Center is to learn how to be self-supporting. It is our hope that when they are sent to poor communities, they will creatively impart this core-vaue of self-support to their communities.
There are several ways that we hope will make the Center self-supporting. A major way is to produce their own food. Trainees will be taught scientific, small-scale food production that can be transferred to most Asian poor rural communities. A good part of the acreage of the camp and a large part of the initial funding is for soil preparation and irrigation. We have several top quality agriculturalists serving as Goducate volunteers at the Center who will help us to achieve this.
Another major way of raising funds is to rent out the Center to corporations for their training functions and to individuals seeking recreational facilities. There is a large potential market for a well run, recreational facility in Iloilo. Besides raising funds for the running of the camp, trainees will also be able to learn many useful skills, eg. management, leadership, planning, creativity. For the Center to be a recreational center, it will need, as funds are available, to have nice facilities, eg. decent accommodation, interesting recreational facilities.
Since funds are limited, we will focus on the agricultural aspect first. After all, the trainees need to eat and agricultural skills are needed in most of the communities that we serve. Scientific, sustainable, small-scale agriculture will be the best way to help Asians help themselves.
Goducate, with its mission of helping young adults in China to help themselves, has opened a second Lifepegs student activity center in southern China. The new center is located in one of the city’s major campus districts with a student population of 60,000 to 70,000 from 8 universities.
The core team of 3 native workers trained by Goducate worked hard to renovate and get the center started within 28… Continue reading
Five of the first batch of trainees who completed the Goducate training program for basketball officials did not have to wait long to get their first jobs. And the jobs were not for matches at village level (where they had done their training), but at inter-university level. This job opportunity for out-of-school youth arose with the 10-day visit of the Indonesian Youth Team from West Java to play against eight… Continue reading
Goducate believes in encouraging the students at the literacy centers to read. However, it has not been easy to set up a library, or somewhere to store books securely. For one thing the centers are scattered over a wide area. For another, many centers are the living rooms of the locals into which the students squeeze for their lessons, while others are very basic structures consisting just of a roof… Continue reading
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