Quality Education for Children in Indonesia

It takes a village to raise a child and it takes a child to inspire a village — Emma Mactaggart, The Child Writes Fund

Since 2017, the YUM Community Library in Cipanas has been continuously increasing the awareness of the right for children to have adults read to them - especially their parents - through the International Read to Me! Day campaign.

This year the event took a place in the YUM Preschool room with around 40 children age 6-12 years old. The stories were read by Miss Agnes and Miss Desy, YUM’s librarian and Preschool teacher. The children listened to the stories from the pop-up book “Amazing WOW” series.  The stories are about siblings who travel to outer space and travel by air balloon. The children enjoyed very much listening to these amazing stories, seeing the beautiful pictures and sounds from the books. We also gave the children an opportunity to show their ability in reading. They picked their own books and read in front of the other children. The reader with the best storytelling skills received a small gift from YUM.

For some children it was their first time having someone read a book or story to them. Most of them have never been read to by their parents or adults. They started to read books themselves when they joined the YUM library. We hope that by doing this activity, the children will have continue to read books or stories for their younger sibling, friends or anyone around them in the future.

Thanks to your support through GlobalGiving, YUM is able to provide the latest quality  reading material for the children and increase their awareness about the important of reading.

At the end of 2018, a group of like-minded NGO workers visited YUM’s projects in Cipanas, West Java. The study tour was organised by the Asia Philanthropy Circle (APC), a platform created for Asian philanthropists. The aim was to show these fellow practitioners a project that integrates education, health and community development activities based on the community’s actual needs. The activity started with an introduction session on YUM’s overall project activities by YUM’s Executive Director, Vanessa Reksodipoetro. The session then continued with the explanation about the day-to-day operations of the various projects by YUM’s Cipanas Project Manager, Samsul Maarif.

Two of YUM’s education projects that were presented were the Community Library and the Preschool. When the participants visited the community library, which is integrated with the preschool, the students welcomed them with Manuk Dadali dance and Garuda Pancasila song. Afterward, the participants had an interactive Q & A session with the librarian and preschool teachers.

A few months earlier, YUM’s preschool teachers also had an opportunity to do a one-week observation at SuryaKasih Preschool, which is run by one of APC’s members, Reachout Foundation. Our teachers learned many new things that could help them to increase and develop their teaching ability.

YUM values these types of partnerships with other organizations that have the same purpose to increase the quality of life of disadvantaged people. By learning from each other about each one’s best practices, we believe it will help us to improve our projects in the future.