Provide Skills for Indonesian Unemployed Youth

Last year, we were very proud that out of the 330 senior students who graduated from the vocational training centre (VTC), 250 of them had successfully found employment. An encouraging results amid the unemployment issue in Cipanas!

In the last three months, we conducted an evaluation of student learning outcomes conducted from February to March for computer classes, English classes, job seeking skills classes and sewing classes. 181 students from a total of 194 students or 93.3% VTC students passed the exam! That's an exciting achievement!

Even after graduating, 4 of 10 sewing students still come and make recycle products such as recycle bags from plastic waste and also from patchwork batik cloth, because in addition to improving students' skills in sewing, we also teach students to love the environment by using plastic waste to make something "once it was trash, now it has class". For now on, we try to get orders from international schools in Jakarta to make laptop bags from old banners or bags from plastic waste. Hopefully we can get more orders, so income from these products will go back to the students and help YUM expand the VTC and also can help more disadvantaged people improve their life. So, if you want to order our products, please contact us!

Moreover, in addition to trying to make the VTC a sustainable project, we held a Training of Trainers (TOT) for four alumni computer students who wish to become computer trainers for elementary and junior high school students. Also, in March, 4 students from UWCSEA Singapore (United World College of South-East Asia) helped us in English Classes for a week. That's a great help to make a beautiful experiences for our students. Thank you Girls!

Some of our staffs also volunteered in English classes and Job seeking classes. These volunteers are needed  because right now, we don’t have sufficient funds to pay the salary of the VTC trainers. It's a very ironic situation when many students want to learn in VTC but we don’t have the funds to pay the trainers.

To face this problem, we opened a paying-class program starts this month with a relatively lower cost compared to the other courses in Cipanas, because we still want to help youths have skills to get a job. These paying-classes hopefully can cover our trainer’s salary in VTC and we can still run the VTC classes. However, significant changes from free-classes into paying-classes are a big challenge for us. It resulted in a decrease of the community’s interest to learn at the VTC, because we never charged a fee before and the community around us is mostly disadvantaged. Less than 4 students for all classes want to join the class, when last year we had more than 300 students! It’s a great dilemma for us, because we can’t start new classes with only 4 students. Sadly, we decided to not open the class for now on and hopefully we can open the classes as soon adequate funding becomes available.

Therefore, we make great efforts to keep running the classes by managing a Training of Trainer, receive orders to make bags of plastic waste, etc. but we still need your help to run this program. GlobalGiving will be offering Mother's Day Tribute Card Campaign by give $500 to each of the top 10 projects with the most donors who make donations as gifts during the Tribute Card Campaign on Tuesday, May 1 at 12:01 am EDT and will end on Sunday, May 13, 2012 at 11:59 pm EST. That would be great if you want to help us in this campaign.

Thank you for your generosity and concern in our project; we believe that your help can reduce unemployment in Cipanas and allow "once it was trash, now it has class" to continue. Thank You!!