Library gathering

Yesterday, was such a wonderful day for me.
At about 1 pm, there was a kind of gathering at Taboo community. There were people from about 6 small libraries, that came to the gathering + plus friends from other communities such as Amalthea Library, Pustakalana, Reading Lights, Kalyamandira, 1001buku Bandung, and Pesat.
The pupose of the gathering was that we can all share experiences about taking care of each library.

The first thing we did together was play a game. The game is difficult to describe, but the game was fun, because we needed to run from one place to another.

The second thing we did, was we made a drawing of each library on a big piece of paper. We draw the picture of each library, where the books are putted, where the carpet is, where the children reads the book, after that each library sticks the picture on the wall and make a presentation abot their library.

I think the presentation was one of the most fun part. From the presentation i knew that most of the library are very simple. A library is located at Desa Mekarwangi, Lembang in a elementary school. It is opened about morning until day time, and the one who takes care of it are still very young about middle school students.

There is also 2 libraries that are located at home. One of the library is located at the living room of a lady. Children come to read.

The most interesting library is owned by a man, and her daughter helps him to take care of the library. they don't have a place to make a library so, at night the books are put in the daughters room but at day time, the books are brought to the garden in front of the house so the children can come and read.

Anyway, the library might be very different from the library that are in your mind. Some started a library with only 30 books, and started adding books so now there are more.

Each library shared their problems, and how are the conditions of the children that come to their library. A lady told me that a child come to their library and knows the alphabet but cant read at all, and that the books are to little, others told that at the beginning the library was full, but because the some children had read all the books, not many came anymore. A man told a story that near the library there is a play station rental, and some children are more interested to go their
There were a few suggestions made by the group. Like, it is good to make the library more attractive, we should try reading the books to the children, we could ask the children to make their own books, we could ask the children to do other activities such as taking a walk, making drawings, and much more.

After sharing, we had a break.

Before starting the next session, we had another game. After that we saw an example of story telling. The story telling was done by my friend Jody. He used a white board and a marker to do the story telling. He made unfinished pictures related to the story and asked the audience what it was, and then started finishing the pictures, he also asked what the name should be, and always ask the audience things. This made the story telling very attractive.

After that we grouped the people into several groups with 2 members in each group and a facilitator. Each group had 1/2 an hour to make new ideas for each library. After that everybodymake a presentation of their idea.

A group had an idea to ask the children to make drawings and than make a simple exhibition by putting the drawings an a string in front of the garden. Besides that, the idea was to ask the children to make trash bins using old stuff for the library.

The other group made an example of decoration they would make for their library.

The other group, did an example of story telling using pictures made by paper, they hope they can do the story telling at their library to.

And there were other ideas.

Actually that was the end of the gathering. We will all gather again about a month from now. Before going home, there were presents for each library from reading lights. The presents werer paper, a box of crayon, stationary, and a plastic of books for each library. After that we had a picture together.

what was fantastic of the gathering was that each library, although small, had a fantastic story, and we hope that one library can learn from one another. Lovely!

The New Story Telling Team

A few months ago, me and the two of my friends, Kandi, and Monja, started a simple program at MI Al-Hidayah, an elementary school at Dago Pojok, Bandung. Our program is Story Telling. We go to MI Al-Hidayah once a week to tell different kind of stories to the first and second graders for about half an hour at the morning. Why did we want to create this story telling programe?

First, we got a link to the school, by a friend and the school asked us to help them create activities for the students there.

Second, we would like to share stories with the first and second graders. We hope, by sharing stories, all of the first and second graders could listen to various stories, such as fables, legends, adventures, and daily stories, etc. We hope we could help the students have new experiences, knowledge, and imaginations.

Thirdly, we also hope by telling stories, we can communicate with the students there, hoping our stories could touch their heart. We also hope that our stories will help stimulate the students so afterwards they can express their feelings, hopes, dreams, imagination too.

Fourthly, from our experiences, we found that a lot of elementary students in Indonesia have difficulties in understanding what they read. There are problems when the students can read word-by-word, but they have difficulties in understanding what they read.

Finaly, we would like to have fun and share the fun with the students.

I’m 23 years old, Kandi is 25, and Monja is 22. We all enjoy spending time with children and join activities that relate to education. All of us has participated in activities related to education for about 3 – 5 years. We all hope that we can have more people to join our activities such as this one (Story Telling). Hopefully, we can find younger participants in these kinds of activities.

So, we started to make flyers to find new volunteers to join the Story telling Program. We stuck them at boards at campus and public centers.

Luckily, a day after we putted the flyers on, a girl, who was four years younger than me, named Dhea said that she was interested to join. After meeting Dhea, we asked her if she could try telling stories at class the next week. Happily, Dhea could. It was such a great news for us.

At “the day”, Dhea came and had her first try on story telling there. The students loved her. At her first day, a little girl from the first grade told her, “Come here again next week and tell us about ghosts!” (Some children likes ghosts stories, I don’t know why) . She always came to the school for the next three week, I found out that she was loyal and happy to participate in the activity.

Dhea also can play rebana ( a kind of percussion). She told the headmaster of the school that she would like to teach the students to play rebana once a week. The headmaster pleased her. So she also started to teach the 4^th and 5^th graders rebana. I think that is nice. By teaching children music, such as rebana, can help the children learn much things, such as concentration, team work, an much more.

After the third week after Dhea joined, there were four more people who wanted to join. They found out about the program from the flyers. All of them are university students. So, there was a new ‘story telling team’. They came to join us story telling the other week. After one of us telling a story, the class was divided into small groups, and each volunteer hold a group, and interacted with the students by reading stories, making drawings together or even chatting with the students. We found out that all of them have been dealing with children before. At the day they joined the class, we found out that they were good with children. All of them became quite close with the students only by a few seconds.

We planned to meet again another day to discuss our next step and to discuss about the next session. I was happy, I hoped that the newcomers of the team, could help give fresh ideas to make our program better. I hope that they enjoy and will keep participating in this program.

Today was the meeting. Everyone (volunteer0 came, from me, Monja, and the other new ones. One didn’t came because he had an important thing to do. Kandi came a little late, and there were two more who would like to join. We talked about how we felt after meeting the students, ideas, stories we know, etc. We also discussed about our next session as planed. We also had an idea to make a journal (like a diary we share) to share our feelings thoughts, ideas and experiences, about us the students, and the program itself. Ayu, one of the new volunteers who was also an art student, wanted to make a scrap book by herself for the journal. Hopefuly, our program could be better bext time, full of creativness, and also all of the volunteers, eventhough just started to know eachother, could feel close to one another. Lets see!

Serang

At the begining of this March, I spent a Saturday at Serang, Banten, Indonesia. I had two missions when I went there, first, I wanted to visit Rumah Dunia (www.rumahdunia.net), second I wanted to visit my friend Mita and Firman who just had a baby.

I arrived at 10 o clock at Rumah Dunia. I met Mbak Tyas, the wife of Gola Gong, the Indonesian writer that started the Rumah Dunia Comunity, and I met 2 othwr voulenteers there. At that time Rumah Dunia was quite empty because, at that time there was no activity there, at the same time, the daughter of Gola Gong was jusrt lounching a book called 'Beatiful Days' at Jakarta.

Any how I took a long time walking around the place. Rumah Dunia is a comunity in Banten. At this place there are many daily activities, such as :

-- Wisata Gambar (drawing ) every Monday at 13.oo - 17.oo ( the Tutor is from Al-Azhar)
-- Wisata Musik (Music) every Tuesday at 13.oo - 17.oo ( the Tutors are kak Rizal and Kak Firman)
-- Theater every Wednesday at 13.oo - 17.oo ( the tutors are kak Peter, Kopal, and Ade)
-- Wisata Tulis dan Komputer ( writting and computers) every Thursday at 13.oo - 17.oo
-- And Story Telling at 13.00 - 17.oo by kak Igun

I walked around the place. I found that the place was quite big. It has a a few librarie. A library of childerns book, a library for teenagers and grown ups, and another library full of English books. I wondered how nice it would be if a lot of places in Indonesia has places like this, at least a place wher anybody can come and get free access to information.

I read the wall magazines around there. I found out that Rumah Dunia has once made a book exhibition there. At the exibition there were a lot of books sold with a cheap price so the children were able to by books with there own pocket money.

At other times, Rumah Dunia has made and will make other different kind of activities such as writting workshops (for grown ups), book bazar, writers meetings, and much more. What is interesting is, whenever there is a activity where there are people from out of town coming, the people don't stay at hotels, but they stay at the houses of the villagers around. They rent rooms from the villagers. This is a great idea, because it helps the villagers to add there income. It also helps the people from out of town and the villagers to know each other beter. They both can learn about new people and cultures.

After visiting rumah dunia, I went to Mita's house to see her baby. Her baby was a boy, named Syair.After visiting Mita I wanted to go right back to Jakarta, but Mita asked me and Ria to walk around town.

So I went out with Mita, Syair, and Ria to go to the place where the kingdom of Banten was. Actually it is a verry beatiful place. It reminded me of Keraton, Jogjakarta, but there was no building anymore. Long ago the building was burnt.

I also saw the tower of the mosque there. Actually it was very nice. To go up the tower I should walk throuh a very small path to go upstairs.

The place i visited was verry beatiful, but there was a lot of people asking for money around. When I went to the tower, at three times, three different people asked us for money, Rp1000,- each so we could pass by.

The garden was beatiful to, but each time we walked pass the garden, there are always children following us around asking for money.

There was a tourist that gave out money and a bunch of children, maybe about twenty came to her to catch the money she gave.

I also visited the museum and enjoyed seing the things and reading the history there. Unfortunately there was not much history written in the meuseum, but I thaught it was nice.

After the visit, i went back to Jakarta. Because Serang was not that far from Jakarta, I think, if I have another oportunity, I think I am going to visit the place again.

Rumah Sakola

A few days ago, I visited Makassar, South Sulaweesi, Indonesia. I stayed there for only 2 days. At first, I hoped that I could go to Tanah Toraja, to see the caves of the dead people (the people of Tanah Toraja, don’t burry dead people, but they put them in caves, see http://www.merriewood.com/exindo/toraja.html ). Unfortunately, going to tanah Toraja takes 6 hour from Makassar by car and because I was going with my father, and he still had things to do at Makassar, I didn’t have enough time to go to Tanah Toraja. Anyhow, I was still happy. I had a chance to go to Rumah Sakola.

I heard about Rumah Sakola since about a year ago from my friend, Sali. Rumah means house and sakola means school. Actually, Rumah Sekola is a house that is used as a small school for the children of fishermen who live around there. Sali knew about Rumah Sakola from an email she got. The email, said that Rumah Sakola needed volunteers to help teach the children there to read, write, and count. Interested with the offer, Sali sent a proposal to become a volunteer there through email. So did some of her friends. After waiting for quite a long time, Sali didn’t get any response back. So did, the others. There were issues that said the email was fake.

One time, Sali had a chance to go to Sulawesi on a holiday. Still curious, while she was in Makassar, she tried to find Rumah Sakola. She had the address of Rumah Sakola, from the email. Unlike the issues, the reality was that Rumah Sakola was real. And at that time, they really needed volunteers. The problem was that the volunteers at Rumah Sekola weren’t quite accessible to the internet. When they want to check emails, they send an sms to their friends in Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia, and ask them to open the emails for them. This is why it took so long for them, to even know that there was an email for them.

I heard that Rumah Sakola is a rumah panggung ( a kind of traditional house http://infokom-sulteng.go.id/wisata.php?id=289 ) located above the sea. But when, I came there Rumah Sakola was not above the sea. Yes, it was a rumah panggung but it was located above the ground. What happened was that Rumah Sakola, was used to be above the sea , near the beach. But, not long ago, there were some businessmen, who wanted to make the beach wider. To do this, they added ground on the beach. By making the beach wider, they have more places to build properties, such as houses, apartments, recreation parks, and shopping centers.

At Rumah Sekola, I met Dian. Dian (21) is a volunteer there. She told me when Rumah Sekola was still located above the sea, the children usually swam there before studying. They usually jumped from the rumah panggung right into the sea.

Dian told me a lot of other stories. She told me that some of the children who live there are quite smart, some learn to read in a very short time. In the other hand, some do have difficulties in learning to read. There was a child that needed 6 months to learn A, B, C’s. Dian also told me that since this year, they volunteers of Rumah Sakola, started a play group program each morning from 9 till 10. The mothers of the children from play group drops their children to rumah sakola and wait for them too. While waiting, they are very help the volunteers in coordinating the play group children.

The school is held everyday from 10.00 until 12.10 am. They group the students into three classes.

I. Kelas Eja Awal ( Reading Beginners Class)
II. Kelas Eja Lanjut ( Reading Senior Class)
III. Kelas Membaca Wacana ( Reading from Books Class)

Dian told me, that since the last year there have been some people that sent books to Rumah Sakola. (Before, there were no books at all, so the children didn’t know what reading was used for). When I looked at the classroom, I saw four racks filled with magazines and book. Dian also told me that the children sometimes have problems with math, but when it comes to selling and buying goods in the (traditional) market, the children didn’t have any problem at all (in counting money).

I had a look around the classroom of Rumah Sakola. There is only one classroom at Rumah Sakola. On the walls there are some drawings, and writing of the children of rumah Sakola. There are also pictures of the children with their activities. I also found some paintings made by pieces of ceramics. From, Dian, I found out that there are more activities there. At noon, some children learn ngaji (learning the holly Qur’an) while at night, some teenagers learn to make crafts there, such as paintings from pieces of ceramics (keramik sisa). Additionally, there are 2 new volunteers named Imron (29) and Muchlis (25) that help the children learn computers (there are 2 new computers there).

At Rumah Sakola there are two more volunteers that are Rida (28) and Susi (25). They all dedicate themselves to help the children of Rumah Sekola ( that has 20 children from Reading class and 50 children from playgroup) to learn reading, writing, and much more. Inspirational?

To contact Rumah Sakola, the address and number is :

Jl. Nusa Indah I no 37 RT/RW 003/004
Kelurahan Kampung Buyang
Kec. Mariso
Makassar 90121
Dian: (+62)-852-5536-7568