Education Indonesia Project #7865

Inspire a love of reading for Indonesian children

by Yayasan Usaha Mulia / Foundation for Noble Work

Project Report | Aug 13, 2012
A new beginning for the Cipanas YUM Library

By Aris Miarti | Fundraising Officer

A new beginning for the Cipanas YUM Library

- Final Report -

Last year, the Cipanas YUM Library only had few books to improve children’s knowledge, especially increase children’s love of reading. They didn’t even understand what is reading since reading is not a habit in Indonesia and they cannot afford to buy books due to their economic situation. Books are expensive. Children around the Cipanas YUM Village will rather buy food to keep alive than buy a book.

The YUM Library is the only library in an area of some 100,000 inhabitants. We had tried to fix those problems but we could not afford to hire a librarian to manage the activities aimed at encouraging ours young visitors to read. No lending system was in place, only few daily activities run by volunteers or children from the YUM orphanage.

So, what happened next?

YUM had started the library to change these conditions. In April 2011, YUM joined GlobalGiving and posted its first project: “Inspire A Love Of Reading For Indonesian Children” to create a place for children to improve their education, skills and inspire them to love reading.

Thanks to everyone’s donations, the library got a new life!!

The first budget for the first year activities was $ 9,435 USD to cover all YUM Library needs. Some great progress was achieved thanks to the help of donors from around the world through GlobalGiving. A librarian was hired who built a proper library system and organized attractive daily activities. Daily activities including storytelling, drawing, reading, writing, arts and crafts creativity, even competitions. Starting with about 5 children on a daily basis at the beginning, the library now attracts 1500 visitors every month!

In addition, this success is supported by a new system applied by our librarian. A new database system divides books based on category and age, including a new lending system and library membership cards. This system also helps us to organize our book collection so that children can either read in the library or bring books home. Not just for kids, this simplicity also helps us to attract visitors from junior and senior high schools, mothers, and public visitors. Even more, our library has become a Library Internship Program for students who want to undertake librarian studies.

Finally, after 1 year on GlobalGiving, the first budget was fully funded with the help of YUM’s friends and donors like you. In 2012, we increased our budget up to $ 17,406 to keep the library running. More and more visitors came, more activities were provided through daily activities or children’s creativity days, cooperation was set up with schools to run a box of books program, visits from international schools students and other organizations came in turn to provide assistance to our library such as paint the library, arts and crafts activities, storytelling, dance and many more.

Special thanks to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) PT. Monex M.A.D, students from the United World College of South-East Asia (UWCSEA Singapore), families from the American Women Association (AWA), students from Pelita Harapan University (UPH), students from the Jakarta International School (JIS), students from the British International School (BIS), volunteers from Centre for Education and Research and Environmental Education (CERES Australia) and also to all donors who gave their contribution for the success of the library. Starting with few left over books, we now have a collection of 4,235 books! What an impressive change!!

Recently, Jacqueline Lee, a GlobalGiving’s representative in Southeast Asia for 2012, visited the library and witnessed the project and the communities it impacts. She interacted with the children who were drawing animals, houses and also made school's timetable, discussed with the librarian about the library daily activities, traveled around the Cipanas YUM Village and communities around us. We really appreciate this visit and it encourages us to give more and more to the children and communities in the library and now we have a chance to make it come true.

A new beginning

Unexpectedly, the Primus Child Foundation offered to support the library. Besides funding our current library activities, thanks to their donation, a pre-school will be established to attract between 30-50 children from poor families, health and nutrition education will be conducted for 75 children every week, and an English Club will be set up, providing internet access to social media, and hopefully pen pals.

The Primus Child Foundation wishes to become the exclusive donor for this project. It is for this reason that we have to part with GlobalGiving for this particular project. We cannot thank GlobalGiving and all our donors enough for the opportunity that we were given, to help hundreds of children in this poor area of Indonesia!

In the future, you will be able to follow the progress of this project on our website at www.yumindonesia.org and through our newsletters.

Thank you again for all you have done to help this cause and please don’t hesitate to contact me at aris@yumindonesia.org if you have any questions or wish further details. I will be happy to respond and welcome you should you wish to come and visit our projects.

Once again, thank you for your support during these past 2 years to help the many children who come to the Cipanas YUM library!!!

P.S.: YUM has another project on GlobalGiving to provide skills to older youth in the same area, details of which can be found at http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/provide-skills-for-indonesian-unemployed-youth/

Thank you for supporting us!!

The children practice yoga during the CERES Camp

Arts and crafts activity during the CERES Camp

Jacqueline observes the children's activity

Jacqueline talking with Pak Ardi - YUM Librarian

Links:

"Provide Skills for Indonesian Unemployed Youth Project"

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Jul 25, 2012
Postcard: Project Site Visit

By Jacqueline Lee | GlobalGiving InTheField Representative

YUM Cipanas Library

Jacqueline Lee is an InTheField Traveler with GlobalGiving who is visiting our partners’ projects throughout Southeast Asia. Her “Postcard” from the visit in Indonesia:

On the day of July 17, I was able to visit the first, and still the only, library provided by Yayasan Usaha Mulia, or YUM, and donors like you in the community of Cipanas, Indonesia. The families there consist of farmers, labor workers, and vegetable sellers at the markets.

When not in school, local youth have the opportunity to get tutored and participate in activities at the library like educational games, creative arts & crafts, and movies – when I arrived the children were making school schedules to take home. These included coloring, drawing, and cutting out shapes to make it their own while learning the days of the week. These youth were ages 6-12. The older kids were working on the computers, and the younger ones were drawing pictures. It was fun to see how each group of younger children had a general theme they decided to draw – one group drawing a home and another drawing elephants and fish.

The library was colorful, encouraging creativity, safety, with the walls filled with books, dictionaries, novels, and more. I also saw the “boxes of books” which is part of the mobile library program for other communities' schools. YUM’s goal is to add more schools to its current 2 where it provides books. These are the first “libraries” in these communities.

I asked the librarian what he did before working at this one, and he said he was a teacher at the government schools. He said the schools lacked expression and creativity for the children, so when he was introduced to the opportunity at YUM, he was happy to join.

I am told that one of the youth that has been through YUM's programs has now been accepted to one of the best universities in Indonesia. This is a huge achievement. I had such a wonderful time meeting the community and children through YUM. To read more about my experience, be sure and check out: JacquelineInTheField Blog.

Arts & Crafts Time

w/ the newly created school schedules

Links:

JacquelineInTheField Blog

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Jun 8, 2012
"Many Angels Came to Us"

By Aris Miarti | Fundraising Officer

Art and craft with BIS students

Many Angels Came to Us. Yes, we are glad that during the last three months, we had so many beautiful moments with people who wanted to help develop our library. With the help and cooperation of PT. Monex MAD, we have received many books to increase our books collection to be read and borrowed by the children and also to be distributed through our Box of Books Program. Around 390 children books were donated including novels, encyclopedias, comics, schoolbooks and also books of general knowledge were given to us, together with games for the children. We had a special celebration for the handover of this donation, and the donor even brought a story teller. What a fun day for everyone, thank you!

Other beautiful moments included the visits of students from the United World College of South-East Asia (UWCSEA Singapore), families from the American Women Association (AWA), students from Pelita Harapan University (UPH), students from the Jakarta International School (JIS) and also students from the British International School (BIS) who all participated in activities with our children in the library such as games, storytelling, arts and crafts, making posters, make a book about things and animals and much more. They also helped us by giving donations such as games, books and magazines. As a result, our collection has now reached 4.132 books. With these books we can increase our services to the children and community around the library and we are really proud that we now have more than 1.500 visitors each month coming to our library!!! What an excellent achievement for our library in a small village!

We also held a Creativity Day together with the Social Ministry to appreciate children’s creativity through a poetry reading competition, a drawing and coloring competition, a boy band and girl band dancing competition, and much more. Through these competitions, we hope the children’s creativity can be increased, as well as their love of reading.

We hope that during the next GlobalGiving Bonus Day on June 13, 2012 you can help us improve our library because during Bonus Day, GlobalGiving will match up to 40% of the online donations received on that day. We invite you to be the next Angels for our library to increase a love of reading in Cipanas, Indonesia, and please consider telling your friends and family about our project - share the link on your blogs or social networks, use the tell-a-friend feature on the project page to email your network, or just bring us up in conversation. We believe that your help will make a better life for the children there. Thank you!!!

Drawing activity with BIS students

Storytelling by JIS students

Thank You PT. Monex!

Games with UPH students

Hey Look at my Picture! :)

Links:

Yayasan Usaha Mulia Annual Report 2011

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