Give An Education To A Trash Picker's Child

Sari has been a student in our XSEducation program for trash picker’s children since the First Grade.

She will be finishing her first year of college this June. She is studying Accounting. Sari is the first child in her family’s lineage to attend college.

We often hear this kind of success story but few know the struggle a young person from a family of trash pickers endures to get this far. She’s not a dreamer of big dreams or a young person with lofty goals. Sari simply tries to make it one day at a time, one foot in front of the other, always one exam away from success or failure.

Sari’s sister, Nastia is in the 6^th grade and her schooling has also been funded by XSProject through the kind contributions of GlobalGiving donors.

Though he is a simple trash picker, Sari’s father is a proud man and asks for nothing. He does his best to provide for his family, hoping that the education his daughters are receiving will lead to a better life for them away from the extreme poverty they live in now.

 XSProject’s XSEducation focus is to make sure every student in the program attends school every day, does not go to the streets picking trash with a parent and that they maintain passing grades. So, we were surprised when we saw Sari’s grades from her first semester of college and that they were not very good at all.

After talking to the family, we learned that Sari had been skipping class every Wednesday. She had been giving her school transportation money to her sister because on Wednesday’s, Nastia’s school collected 20,000 Rupiah (about $1.50) from each student. On a trash picker’s salary of about $5.00 a day, there was not enough money to send both girls to school on Wednesdays.

For most of us, this is a simple problem to remedy, and of course, XSProject is now making sure both girls are back in their classes every day.  But the shame of not being able to provide for his girls runs deep in their father. Because her grades must improve for her to go on to her second year, XSProject is also now providing special tutoring so Sari can catch up with her studies and improve her grades.

This is Sari’s story. But it is a common story in the trash picker community. XSProject’s General Manager, Retno Hapsari said it best: “For a long time, I could never understand why I would always see “that look” and a fearful reaction when I talked to the parents about being supportive of their children’s education; especially the bigger kids”.  Secrets have consequences.Getting to the truth releases shame so secrets no longer need to be kept and in this case, guarantees a brighter future for a trash picker’s daughters.

Your donation to  this project assures that XSProject continues to fund not only the education of these students but also the small, unexpected and incidental needs that are often so critical to attending class every day.