Ubud schools projects

ongoing since 2004: 44 elementary schools

introduction

Wide public education in Indonesia has been under development for less than 60 years and has been consistently under funded. The club is working with 44 elementary schools to provide safe physical environments, school supplies, teaching material and classroom furniture.

School Renovations

Totally renovating an elementary classroom was our first project. There are many more to go! This effort provided a tile floor, fixing and painting walls and replacing doors. School room supplies included new benches and tables, a teacher desk a storage cabinet and many classroom supplies.

The project has extensive member participation and relies heavily on direct donations for repairs and renovations. Matching Grants are the source of funding for school furniture, children's school supplies and teaching material.

We have replaced one roof, repaired a second, installed two water towers to provide clean water, tapped into city water and built a septic tank to obtain clean water for a third school,  renovated toilets, repaired a playground that was always flooded and breeding mosquitoes in the rainy season and are now preparing to build toilets in a school that had none at all. 

We are funded for repairing a third playground that is a health hazard during the rainy season.  And then there have been a variety of little projects like painting a classroom here and there, usually in conjunction with a visiting club that wished to do some 'hands on' work...always a fun experience with kids and staff looking on  

Additionally, we have provided hundreds of needed benches and tables for the kids, cabinets for the classrooms, teachers' desks and chairs and an enormous quantity of teaching and learning materials in six schools.  We are now waiting for RI funding for another three schools.

Home Reading Program

One element of providing teaching material is the Home Reading Program. Each classroom gets 100 books to encourage reading for pleasure after school. When parents' major financial concern is feeding their families, books are a luxury that cannot be afforded. Another aspect of the project is teacher training provided by Indonesian staff from a private National Plus elementary school. The club so far has been funded to upgrade eight schools and still has a long way to go!

A New Approach

Five classrooms is what is usually found in most of the village government schools.  What we would recommend for each classroom reading corner is about 150 grade appropriate books.  The cost for each classroom would be approximately Rp 2,250,000 ($245) per classroom x 5 classrooms or a total of Rp 11,250,000 ($1,220)for a 5 room school. 

We have found that providing boxes of books per classroom is much more effective than equipping a library.  The books in a box are much more accessible to the students so they are more widely used and read; and ownership of that smaller set tends to lead to better control by the teacher and better care by the students.  The boxes can be secured easily in the classroom cupboard.  The costs of the boxes are much less than a library room plus shelves, plus a librarian!

In other schools to date, we have provided 100 books per classroom in a box on wheels and the kids usually sit around on the floor to select their books and read them.  The 'box of books' is about Rp 1,600,000. per box...again one in each classroom. 

There are approximately 180 classrooms still in need of books in the Ubud district so you can see the scope of this literacy effort is not small.  The cost of completing the project is at least Rp 288,000,000 ($31,000) !  But given time and continued support, we will make it happen.

With help from a number of sources, over 40 classrooms have already received books, including the two largest schools in the district that have far greater than the normal number of classrooms...very overcrowded but not much we can do about that.  

Local Support is Crucial

All of the major projects have been completed with village labor donated by the villages in which the schools are located, one of our club's stipulations.

Our club has taken on a huge effort but the results are so gratifying!  Although the work proceeds slowly, we are blessed to have our wonderful Balinese architect insuring renovation work is done properly and our headmistress from Dyatmika to guide us through the purchase of classroom materials and explain how books can be used in the classrooms.