Help Promote Good Reading Habits in Kalimantan

Dear YUM Friends,

How are you? We hope the New Year has been kind to you.

YUM Kalimantan Library has been greatly changed after 2012 as 2012 was the last year after 4 years Barclays supporting our Library.  Thanks to Barclays, a new Library room, furnitures, books, arts and crafts materials, edu toys, full time librarian, and many more were provided so that we can help children and communities around us to increase their knowledge and education.

Our children now like to write, read, dance, do storytelling and become more active, creative, confidence as well as have courage and spirit to reach their dreams after getting guidance and direction of a series of activities that have been carried out in the library. As a closing of Barclays help, in last December, we completed the library’s facilities with some new books, novels, comics, encyclopedias, school text books, edu_toys, arts and crafts materials, sports equipments, etc. to facilitate visitor activities. What a great improvement for the children and communities in Bukit Batu, Central Kalimantan who live with only less than $2 per day and  difficulty to access education facilities which is too costly for the 13,000 inhabitants. Until now YUM Kalimantan Library is still the one and the only library in the area.

Early 2013 it’s a tough time for us due to lack of funding to operate and run the library activities, while number of visitors keep increasing.  In 2012 numbers of visitors reach as many as 400 visitors per month and by 2013 the numbers of visitors reach 838 visitors per month in average. GlobalGiving donations became the only hope for our library to keep running.

Keep running with daily activities such as reading, writing, watching movies, arts and crafts activities, we are indebted to our librarian and volunteer who come and help in the library. In January 2013, we hosted Indonesia Canada Youth Exchange participants who helped our activities in English class, cooking class, dance, arts and crafts activities. These activities were opened by dance performance presented by our children and continued with watching a documentary film about the YUM project.  We also had a visit from Australian Embassy and Social service office of Central Kalimantan. Hopefully these kinds of visit can promote the library and invite more people to visit YUM project.

After struggling to get funding for the library, we received good news which gives us hope. A law firm in Singapore called Linklaters contacted us to express their interest in supporting YUM project and agree to help with our library for one year as part of their CSR program starting from February 2013. This support really helps us to run library activities such as series of daily activities, English club, creativity day, and project management.

Hopefully through GlobalGiving Donors, Linklaters and anyone who help YUM Kalimantan Library, we can keep the library running to help the children and communities around us and increase their knowledge and education.

Thank you :)