Hello my dearest friends
Year 2011 has just passed and we are now entering the year 2012. We praised God for His kindness to allow our social community service continues to run in the Cakung Children Community. We even has started the learning activities in Muara Baru, North Jakarta.
With these two activity groups, we can serve a broader opportunity for the children in humble areas, not limited to Cakung area. Therefore, we decided to change the name of our community to be Children Learning Community, a community who opens opportunities and increase awareness of the young children the importance of keep studying. We hope they will nurture the positive outlook in their life and for the nation. During January 2012, the learning activities run well. The Cakung group started their activities on the 2nd Friday of January while the Muara Baru group started on 2nd Sunday of January.
There were several activities held in this January. We started our activities by organising a picnic event for children and their parents for the Cakung Group in Ragunan Zoo, on Friday, 6th January 2012. Unfortunately, not all children could participate in it as some of them were still on holiday and some of them went to their villages with their parents.
Twenty children and their parents participated in this outings, assisted by one facilitator. Eventhough there were not many children participated, we had fun and enjoyed the time. It felt so good especially after the tiring and depressing time during the eviction a few months ago.
The heavy pouring rains in January forced several families in the area to evacuate, they even had to stay in the Learning Tent for several weeks. Cynthia's family (from Category III group), Umi (Category III group), Lina-Lini (Category I group) had to stay in the Learning House because their rented houses were flooded. In early February, Cynthia's family decided to move to another rental house again, and it is close by to the paddy field and their children school.
Firman's hut was flooded and covered by water due to the heavy rain in January. The rain flowing through the gutter almost swept away the hut. Firman (from Category I group) only live together with his grandma. Their poor condition touches our heart to share. Now, the hut has been moved to an area far from the gutter. The donated fund was used to by some building materials, bamboo and triplex.
On Friday, 20th January 2012, the children received a donation of lunch from Ladies Group from Utan Kayu, East Jakarta, lead by Mrs. Nani. The children thanked and enjoyed the meals before they started studying.
Thank to Mrs Nani and the Ladies Group from Utan Kayu who shares their concern and help.
Toward the end of January 2012, we had another 5 children obtained their birth certificate. Djoyo, Windy, Alfiah, Iqbal and Haidar, they are the last group who registered their birth since October 2011 in the Civil Registry Office.
All the parents are relieved and happy as their children now have a formal documents which may help them to enter school and be accepted as citizens of our beloved country.
Alternative Learning Activities
a. Cakung Children Community
We started the learning activities on 2nd Friday of January 2012 with a few numbers of children. There were only 10 children attended.
Despite of the lack of facilities including the place to learn, the study spirit still endures. Kicking off from 3rd Friday of January to date, we have more children attending the study activities. There are seven new children from nearby area who join us to study, starting from Category 0 until Category II. All together we have 40 children.
Starting from early 2012, we changed the learning material including changing the category group from Category I-IV to be Category 0-III. The young children are grouped in Category 0, while children who knows alphabets and learning to spell are grouped in Category I.
The children who can read and write simple words are grouped in Category II. The children who are fluent in reading and writing are part of Category III. Two children of the Category IV, Indri and Mala, now start to accompany children from Category 0 and I, eventhough they can not do it fully as they are still having other activities at their formal school and are in the last grade of their high school.
The facilitation for Category 0 are done by several volunteers, one of them is the parent of Cakung children who routinely assisting the facilitators.
The children from Category I-III are accompanied by us, the facilitators, including Kak Qori'ah, Kak Uju, Kak Ari, Kak Lestari, Kak Uwie and Kak Debby.
Living Values Activities were introduced in 2012. This activity is inspired from a book titled Living Values: An Educational Program published by Grasindo. This is a reference book written by a non-profit organisation and supported by UNESCO and sponsored by UNICEF.
We found this valuable book is worth to apply for the children and to improve the creativity of all the facilitators.
There are several positive values emphasised in this program, they are peace, respect, love, responsibility, joy, collaboration, honesty, humility, sense of tolerance, simplicity and unity.
For January, we started to introduce PEACE to the children. This activity was held every Saturday, after the studying session.
There are some children stories telling about their experiences living in the new houses. You may find it on the below blog.
http://cakungchildrencommunity.blogspot.com
2. Muara Baru Community
The learning activity was started on the 1st Sunday in January 2012. We encouraged children to read books and to play in the Learning/Activity House. We played scrabble gameboard to learn words. Through this game, we learn Bahasa Indonesia.
There are 20 children who took turn and came to learn reading and to play scrabble.
The full activity was started on the 3rd week of January. After reading books from our library, the children learn Bahasa Indonesia, English and maths.
There are 2-3 facilitators for accommodating the children in this community, one trained facilitator and 1-2 grown up children from Cakung Community (who were in Category IV). This is a good opportunity for regenerating new facilitators.
Finally, we thank all facilitators, children and residents of Cakung. Special thanks to Kak Uju, Kak Qori'ah, Kak Uwie, Kak Ari and Kak Lestari.
Library
We started our library activity on Wednesday, 1st January 2012, a few days prior to the studying activities for Cakung Community. We agreed to run the library program on every Wednesday afternoon, and it agrees to our plan established in December 2011.
The activity was run by our librarian, Mala, with some helps from 3 Cakung children who are in charge for managing some programs. They are also helped by some parents.
The first thing they did was to re-register all the books in Cakung. There are some boxes of books we stored in Muara Baru house of learning.
We bought some new books in January 2012 therefore, we need to re-register all the books. The new books are reference books for facilitators and reading books for children, fiction and non-fiction (general knowledge books).
For the time being, we still store some books in boxes as the cupboard where we used to keep our books are still in Muara Baru and some parts of it are broken. It is not strong enough to hold many things. We are planning to buy bookshelves and to fix the cupboard in February 2012.
Nutrition for Children Activity
In January, the activity to improve children nutrition run well. We provided quite variety of nutritious meals yet simple, including a glass of milk every Saturday before studying then lunch nutritious meal after the study.
On 2nd Saturday of January, we had hard-boiled eggs, on week 3, we had pecel (Indonesian steamed vegetable salad) and on the last week, we had oranges.
The menu was prepared by one of the residents and she prepared it in accordance to the Children Learning Community Program established in December 2011. Cynthia is in charge to in this Nutrition for Children activity and she was helped by another 3 committees in this Children Learning Community.
We thank all of the committees and Indri's mom who had prepared the healthy menu in January. Thanks to Mrs Nani and Ladies Group from Utan Kayu, East Jakarta who had provided lunch as well as Kak Qori'ah who routinely provided vitamins for all children in Cakung.
Scholarship
On Monday, 9 January 2012, most schools started their classes. All the scholarship recipients attended their classes. There were some students live quite far from their school therefore, we supported them with some money for public transport fare.
Indri and Mala, both are in their last grade of high school, are also scholarship recipients. They consistently assist many different studying activities in Cakung. They do it after classes and studying for themselves. Usually, they do their maximum after they complete their study and take a rest.
In this January, there are some routine expenses for all high schools students who are in their last grade. It is their tuition fee, stationery, photo copy costs and internet rental for searching some reference for their school tasks.
For the primary school students, the expenses cover stationery and school necessities such as school bags and shoes.
Our plan for February 2012 are:
1. to purchase bookshelves and some books for the children
2. to fix the cupboard to store studying materials of Cakung Children Community.
3. to purchase children studying necessities, for theoretical and practical general knowledge
4. to buy the necessities for improving children's nutrition.
We finally thank to all friends who support us in prayers, funds, efforts and materials to realise the programs held in Children Learning Community for this month.
We thank for the fundings which help us in running many operational programs in Children Learning Community. Thanks to Mbak Inonk and friends, Mrs Ivana and family, Mrs Rina Anwar, Sr. Annunicata, OSU, Mr. Husin Raharja - Mrs Yuli, Mrs Vina and Mr Arend - Michelle Maramis, Mbak Jenny, Kak Diah Campbell and friends gathered in PIQ (Indonesians Association in Queensland), as well as Children First initiated by Mrs. Ann Djudzman and Gemeente Oostkamp initiated by Mbak Inonk in Belgium.
Special thanks to Sr. Annunciata, OSU for knitting yarn for Cakung children, to Mrs Danik and Mrs Harimurti for the beads, to Kak Anita Linggar and Kak Tonny Tjhai for translating the children stories in the blog.
Again, our sincere thank to all of you. May God bless all of you abundantly and may our collaboration continues.
May God bless us all.
Warmest regards
on behalf of Children Learning Community
Debby
P.S.
You could give donation via bank:
Acc.holder Debby Maitimu or Dwi Resmi Sari
BCA Branch office Matraman, East Jakarta, Indonesia
Acc.no.342-2792161
Swift code : cenaidja
or contact me for material support on +628129685594
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