Quality Education for Children in Indonesia

Dear generous supporter,

As the famous child educator Maria Montessori once said: “Play is the work of the child”. Playing is essential to children, and at YUM we totally agree! Up and running since 2012, the toys library has been integrated into YUM’s Community Library and Pre-school activities. At YUM, we understand that toys and games are an essential part of childhood development, especially in the early years. In addition to stimulating their senses and movement by playing games together, children learn to share, moderate their emotions, and experience friendly competitive spirit and other good things that support their cognitive development. 

Unfortunately, poverty often limits the capacity of parents to purchase fun, safe and educational toys or games for their children. The parents also have limited quality time with their children because they spend most of their time working to support their family financially. YUM’s Toys Library project plays a significant role to fill this absence.

Usually, the operating hours of the toys library is from 9 am to 5 pm, Monday to Friday.  But sometimes pre-school students play inside the library before the start of school.  In the afternoon, the toys library is full of elementary school students.  Sometimes they take the toys and games out of the room and play in the library’s hall. We are not only providing modern and updated indoor games but also the traditional and outdoor games such as congklak (an indonesian traditional game consisiting of sea shells), badminton, football, basketball etc.

We love seeing how happy the children are when they are playing. Maybe one day you’ll come and visit and play with them? ^-^

There were so many exciting activities that happened in 2017 for our YUM Community Library in Cipanas. At the beginning of the year, we received a donation from the Australian government to renovate our old building, and to run new educational programs for the parents. The library and pre-school are now more comfortable with new flooring, new rooms and a new play area.  The parents have had several parenting talks, with experts in the field, and we are now making a special module in collaboration with these experts so that this program can continue after the funding from the Australian government ends.

We continue to offer daily activities to our beneficiaries, and we have also begun to run new programs such as a cooking class, a computer club and a science club. One librarian, two pre-school teachers’ and five activities tutors continue to take care of the children and organize activities. A total of 45 pre-school children attend classes three times a week, and almost every day we have around 30 to 40 children coming to the library either to read, borrow a book or participate in one of the activities.

None of these achievements above could have happened without your support. As major donors fluctuate and we are never sure of continued funding, the support you are giving us is the most important since we can use these funds when and where it is really needed.

At this end of year, we would like to thank you again for your continued support and dedication. Your help is still very much needed to continue our work and we hope that if you haven’t yet made a donation this end of year, please do consider donating to this project.