Give An Education To A Trash Picker's Child

This is XSProject’s first GlobalGiving Project Report for “Give an Education to a Trash Picker’s Child”. You are one of our very first donors and we have prepared this introductory report just for you. In the past, we linked the education of the children to our sister project that helps the Jakarta, Indonesia trash picker community “Generate Income and Hope From Non-Recyclable Garbage.” Due to the growing needs and number of children at the Cirendeu garbage dump, we decided to dedicate a project just to them.

In 2004, XSProject supported the education of just 16 children from the trash picker community. Ten years later, we are supporting 57 students! Of the 42 students in elementary school this year, the largest group is Grade 1 with 12 students. There are also 15 students in High School or Middle School that will be graduating soon and going on to vocational school or college.

Back at the garbage dump, our group of loving volunteer expat mothers are helping 54 children under the age of 5 at the XSVillage Pre-School. These moms teach the children to count, recite the alphabet and write their names in preparation for entering Grade 1. You can see from the pictures that this is a very unconventional pre-school. A large tarp serves as the floor and there are no desks or chairs.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, when the elementary school children return home, they also find their way to XSVillage Pre-School to get help with homework and to take part in arts and crafts projects.

We have many needs, but really one goal, which is that every child living in the trash picker community, receives a complete education. It takes a lot of planning and organizing to get 57 kids to school each day, but the XSProject team loves every minute of it. Thank you for making this possible. We’ll share more with you about the students next month.