Cipanas YUM Village

Visiting author, Mike Brumby, meets YUM’s sponsored children

On Friday March 29th, the Cipanas YUM Village was very lucky to have a visiting author come and present his book to a group of children from the local community. The group of children to whom the author, Mike Brumby, read to was a group of 55 children from very disadvantaged families living in the area of Cipanas, West Java. Several of these children are orphaned, some living with only one parent or relative, and a few are still helping out with the family income by working at the local market after school. Needless to say, these children are not the kind of children who can afford books.

The 55 children are currently being sponsored by the United World College of South East Asia (UWCSEA). UWCSEA helps keep them in school, pay for after school help with homework, vocational training (such as English and Computer classes), nutritional supplements for the whole family as well as parenting and nutrition talks for the children’s parents every 2 months.

Mike Brumby has been living in Indonesia for many years. Originally from England, his parents moved to Jakarta when he was small and Mike spent most of his childhood in Indonesia. The book he presented to the children, called “Alistair the Armadillo”, is Mike’s first book and talks about an armadillo who helps his friends understand the joy of being clean, eating healthier and doing exercise.

Mike’s presentation started with the children each getting an “Alistair the Armadillo” sticker and writing their names on a piece of paper which would then be used as raffle tickets for prizes at the end of the reading. The children listened attentively as Mike read his book which he had himself translated into Indonesian. For his first ever presentation in Indonesian, Mike could not have had a more empathic and forgiving audience. Some children even kindly helped him out with the pronounciation of several words.

After the Question and Answer session, Mike had prepared a game where he and his partner Ajeng had cut some fresh fruits, such as banana, orange, strawberry, dragonfruit and “salak”, and started the “Guess the fruit game” where a group of children were blindfolded, given a cut fruit and had to guess the fruit. Surprisingly, Mike says that in all the presentations he has made in various schools in Jakarta, this was the first group of children who got each fruit right!

The session ended with the raffle where Mike had prepared 2 “Alistair the Armadillo” t-shirts and 2 books to give away. The children were excited and those whose name was called out to receive a prize had huge smiles on their faces. When Mike was down to his last prize, he suddenly stopped, whispered to his partner Ajeng and declared to the children that since he had a stock of another 12 books in his car, he had decided to give those away too. The children all clapped their hands in excitement! After all 14 books had been given away, Mike signed each copy and the children clung to their book as if it were a treasure.

Mike might not realize this, but the books he gave out to the kids are probably the only book, or only one of the very few books, these children own. Thank you Mike for coming to read your book and making these children’s day!

Let the spirit of New Year become new hope for the VTC

By Aris Miarti - Fundraising Officer

Happy New Year 2013!!! May the spirit of the New Year bless us all to do the best that we can do.

The YUM Vocational Training Centre (VTC) proudly announces that the Second Term (from September until December 2012) has ended.

Starting on September 10^th 2012, the VTC Second Term welcomed around 316 students in 5 types of classes including English Classes, Computer Classes, Sewing Classes, Job Seeking Classes and Hospitality Class. This second term has been provided 20 classes with an average 10 to 20 students per class. Learning from the implementation of the VTC’s first term, in the second term, we had a chance to perfect the previous system in order to create a better impact and result for 3 months.

During this 3 months period, implementation of the Second Term VTC was divided into 3 steps: preparation, implementation and evaluation or final test. The preparation was held to prepare the system, the tutors, the schedule, and the registration process. With help from the United World College South East Asia (UWCSEA), the Priscilla Hall Memorial Fund (PHMF) and also donors through GlobalGiving, we were able to reach more disadvantaged youths and open a new hospitality class.  

After the preparation was set, in order to attain commitment from the participants, we gave orientation to all participants explaining the rules and regulations.  We are very happy with the implementation of the second term as we managed to enforce the regulations and build better understanding with the participants; those who were not responsible were reminded of these rules and regulations.  Those who passed the final test and met 70% of the attendance would get a certificate and their deposit would be 100% refundable. If the percentage of the attendance is less than 70%, then the deposit will be only 50% refunded and the participants will not receive a certificate.

As a result, from a total of 316 participants enrolled at the time of registration,  at the end of the session only 250 participants were allowed to follow the final test due to their absence on 3 consecutive days without any notice. In the end, after all the curriculums were taught, the final test was held. The final test was divided into two types; theory and practice, to ensure that the students understood both the theory and the practice, which they would have to face when they work. Conducted in early December, this final test determined the students’ graduation.

From 250 students who followed the final test, only 228 students or 91.20 % of students were eligible to receive a certificate while the rest of students who failed to meet 70% attendance were only given information on their test result. What a great improvement from the first term before!

Therefore, based on these successes, as well as the spirit and hopes of the New Year 2013, we hope that we can provide better training through the VTC. Currently, we are preparing for the Third Term of the VTC for around 200 students and we will start on January 7^th, 2012.

Also, as a reminder for donations option, GlobalGiving provides Monthly Recurring Donation option for your convenience if you want to donate regularly every month. This monthly recurring donations will really help us to plan VTC programs, create budgets, and expand services.

Hopefully with the support from all of you, we can always continue to help disadvantaged youths around the Cipanas YUM Village to enhance their soft skills and help them to find a job and decrease the unemployment rate in the area. Thank you!

Learning to creat a table in Computer Class

English Reading Final Test in English Class

Role Play in Job Seeking Class

Welcoming a pre-school and toys library to the Cipanas YUM Village

Thanks to funding from PRIMUS Child Foundation, YUM Cipanas is finally able to open a much needed pre-school as well as a toys library in our community center. Catering to over 40 disadvantaged children from the surrounding communities, 2 classes are offered every day from Monday to Friday and the toys library is open every afternoon.

The PRIMUS Child Foundation is a non-profit, non-governmental corporate foundations that provide grant support towards educational and healthcare programs.

Beside the pre-school and toys library, PRIMUS Child Foundation has agreed to fund the yearly costs of the Cipanas community library as well as provide nutrition and health education to the children coming every week.

The number of visitors to the Cipanas community library increases every month, up to almost 1,200 visits every month now, and YUM would like to take this opportunity to offer useful and much needed programs such as educational exploration for the children, reading habit and simple hygienic habits such as hand washing and tooth brushing.

Staring At Rocks - a volunteer’s story

I have been staring at rocks for about 14 minutes. I had no idea rocks could be so incredible. Seriously, just a pile of rocks, amazing.

Of course there is a lot more to these little rocks than meets the eye. These rocks, along with a bamboo enclosure, a freshly dug trench, a concrete filtering pond and garnished with some reeds are the product of a mornings work for the plucky young things from Ceres Global.

The manager of the Organic Farm here at the YUM village in Cipanas. West Java is a gentle soul. Quiet, hard working and 100% involved, committed and in love with his work, Oleh is an inspiration. So today it was an absolute pleasure to be able to help him out with what we saw as a simple mornings work, but what was to him, another timely and costly job in the long list he is constantly trying to get through.

The water filter system is something that Oleh has been planning for a while. The water that was used to irrigate the crops came from the drains which run down the road outside the farms boundaries. Filled with silt, rubbish and pollution it was vital that some sort of filtering system was installed to clean the water, preferably in a natural, environmentally friendly way. No electricity, no pumps and no cabling necessary just a few rocks and bamboo along with 6 pairs of extra hands and a whole lot of enthusiasm ensured the job got done in 4 hours.

It’s just another day here for us at the YUM village in Cipanas. It’s funny, many people would look at a country like Indonesia that we would be able to teach them and “help” them with all of our modern knowledge and technology. Although I think I can safely say on behalf of the group we have learnt more about ourselves and this beautiful part of the world from the fantastic staff and kids at YUM than they could ever learn from us. This trip has definitely been a cultural exchange, with us teaching them Australian songs and dances (pretty sure we were having more fun doing the hokey pokey than they were) and them blowing us away at bonfire night with traditional songs as well as poetry readings from Sopiah and a performance by Kampungs local boyband, pretty sure they’ll be in the top 10 singles chart by August, seriously, watch out for them.

It has also been an opportunity for us to not only lend extra hands but to help contribute ideas about how projects could be run more efficiently, brainstorming new ideas and potential solutions as well as taking ideas back to Australia to work on and implement in our own lives and communities.

Technically I didn’t help physically build the water filter system, even though I’m fairly confident I played a vital role in the project by taking photos, verbal encouragement and hydrating Devin (don’t ask), the pride that I felt after the dam was unblocked and the water came rushing aka trickling (just trying to add a bit of drama here people) down through the system was incredible. To think that we can actually make a difference, that something that we see as so easy and simple can make such a huge difference is the kind of thought process and feeling I wish every person could experience. The look on Oleh’s face is something that I won’t forget and long after we’ve left YUM that little cluster of rocks will still be there, being incredible and doing something amazing.

Written by Lydia Fisher July 2012

(Lydia was one of 14 volunteers that came to spend 10 days in Cipanas through the organization CERES Global. You can find her original blog post on CERES Global’s blog: http://ceresglobal.wordpress.com/)