Additional Projects
In addition to the five main education programmes at the Trust we have various other projects and supporting programmes that we run and we're always looking for things we can do for the community and niches that we can fill. Whether it be games sessions for the kids, extra academic support or one off events like talent shows, we will run whatever extras we have capacity for. Our volunteers are instrumental in helping us deliver such things.
Playgroup
We re-launched playgroup at the Trust at the beginning of 2024 and it's been a huge success! Held twice a week, the Playgroup class is open to all children before they are of kindergarten age.
Early childhood education is crucial for children's development and playgroup is a place for the kids to receive important cognitive stimulation for their brain's development. The main goals of our playgroup are to facilitate positive play and learning experiences for children, through social, dynamic and fun means. During the playgroup sessions, children have the opportunity to interact with other kids and learn through play.
The sessions are jam packed with fun activities and the kids have an amazing time learning and playing together.
We also encourage parental involvement in playgroup activities to strengthen children's interactions and observe their development. Contact us to register!
Obrolan Wanita
‘Obrolan Wanita’ roughly translates as ‘Women’s Talk’. The idea of this group is to create a safe space for women to address topics which in Indonesian society are often considered taboo.
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This project stems from our involvement with the NGO Days for Girls, which promotes the empowerment of marginalised and impoverished women all over the world through the facilitation of training and education. Days for Girls provide free reusable sanitary kits for women living in poverty, they currently deliver these to the Trust every few months for us to hand out to the neediest in our community. In order to be culturally sensitive, this programme is delivered by female staff and volunteers, as it's important to create a comfortable environment for the women involved.
The activities and topics covered now vary greatly from the aforementioned 'taboo' topics such as feminine health and things associated with this to parenting advice, dietary help and discussions about internet safety. Often fun interactive sessions are planned with activities such as, eco detergent making or cooking classes.
Library
We've had a library at the Trust for many years, but towards the end of 2023 we began a focused effort to increase engagement from the kids and get them excited about reading books. Since then we've seen scheduled story times become a success and we've run a reading competition with unprecedented popularity.
In September 2023 we launched Story Time readings led by volunteers during library slot sessions which take place after lunch before the kids come to our afternoon classes at the Trust. This was the first time we had tried something like this in recent times and it was a huge success. Our volunteers prepared a semi-immersive experience for the kids with a reading of Where the Wild Things Are with accompanying live guitar music. The kids loved it so much and since then the engagement with our library had drastically increased. By popular demand we are continuing story time on a weekly basis!
An enormous contributing factor towards the increase is the addition of a great deal more children's books written in Bahasa Indonesia. Previously most of our books were written in English and beyond the kids reading level. These new books have been kindly donated or bought with funds from donations to the Trust so we are incredibly grateful for all those who have contributed. It's been wonderful so see kids fall in love with reading and we're doing all we can to encourage it!
We've also run a reading competition to see how many books the kids can read in a set period if time, no of us envisaged how popular and competitive it would turn out to be.