YOU are the KEY

YCAB Foundation’s Rumah Belajar reopened its first school gates to students to sit and study in the physical classrooms in October 2021, following the Indonesian government’s regulations. Thanks to your kindness, our students have experienced online learning with its best perks and are now mentally preparing themselves for offline school.

Activities done face-to-face at school are crucial to students’ development and well-being. They provide academic instruction, support for developing social and emotional skills, safety, physical/speech, and mental health therapy, and opportunities for physical activity. While the pandemic hit us hard in 2020, schools were forced to shift and students were sent home to study remotely. This has definitely impacted our students’ and teachers’ way of doing traditional schooling. 

We acknowledge that for many students in Indonesia, the educational gaps that existed before the pandemic—in access, opportunities, achievement, and outcomes—are expanding. Many of these impacts are falling disproportionately on students who went into the pandemic with the greatest educational needs and fewest opportunities—those from historically marginalized and underserved groups. 

Online schooling has become another obstacle in our students’ daily lives. Inequity in devices, internet access, and data packages are one of the many challenges that they need to face. This has certainly needed additional costs which are not small to our students, whose families are struggling to make ends meet.

With school reopening and activities back to their normal state, students, teachers, and educators of YCAB Foundation Rumah Belajar will follow strict health protocols and only those who are fully vaccinated can come to school. This initiative is hoped to minimize transmission of COVID-19 among students and staff in Rumah Belajar and to their families and the broader community. 

We, YCAB Foundation, want to take stock and begin the hard work of building our Rumah Belajar to get back better and stronger—with the resolve necessary to ensure that our schools are defined not by disparities but by equality and opportunity for all students to flourish and thrive. 

Once again, we want to thank you for your benevolence and kindness. With your support, students under the wings of our YCAB Foundation’s Rumah Belajar continue to study, reaching their dreams, one step at a time.