By Lilik C Trirahayu | School Principal
Dear friends and kind supporters of Taman Cipta Karya Nusantara Foundation,
During the past few months, on the one hand classes have continued as normal while on the other hand it has been anything but normal as we celebrated our third birthday as a school and started a new chapter with our move to a beautiful new building! In September 2021, as the pandemic was raging around the world, The Lilliput World Montessori School was born and opened its doors with three teachers welcoming about a dozen young children. Our school was a traditional Javanese wooden “joglo” house, with no walls on three sides and, as we found out, a leaky roof! Fast forward three years to today and we now have over ninety students, about twenty teachers and a wonderful purpose-built and well-equipped school building! We extend heartfelt thanks to all our kind donors for your kind and thoughtful support in helping make this possible. In doing so, we also pay tribute to those three teachers and the colleagues who have joined them as the school has grown. If students are what a school is all about, with their curiosity and dreams and a world of possibilities ahead of them, it is teachers who help make those dreams happen and the best of those possibilities become reality. Thank you one and all!
While growth in quantity has been a noticeable feature of the past three years we have paid attention to ensure that the quality of teaching and learning keeps pace with the growth in numbers and have been very happy with students’ progress. We regularly hold enrichment sessions for teachers, run both by more senior teachers and friends from other organisations, including for example Montessori Haus Asia, and visiting academics. And if anyone had any question about our teachers’ creativity and engagement these were well answered with a memorable moment during Indonesia Independence Day celebrations in August. Some teachers organised games, arts and craft activities for the children but the most fun part of the occasion was a surprise red-and-white fashion show of extraordinary style prepared secretly by other teachers!
After months of anticipation and some long days and late nights of preparation, including exploring the new building, welcoming new team members and setting up new apparatus and furniture, in early September 2024 we had several days of events to mark and celebrate moving into our new building.
A highlight of the move, that took place during the opening of the new building on 8 September, was a symbolic parade, or “kirap", in which children processed from the old school building to the new one, carrying with them some school apparatus and classroom materials. The 15-minute walk by children and parents, was led by a Hanoman figure, after whom our new building is named. Hanoman is an important personality in the traditional story of the Ramayana; he is powerful yet kind-hearted and revered for his faith, love, courage and commitment to a cause, qualities to inspire us all. The procession also featured a bullock cart to help bring along some of the school materials and complete the move. Please see https://www.instagram.com/tamanciptakaryanusantara/ for more on the event.
A few weeks later it was time to mark the school's third birthday which we happily did with Montessori birthday games and traditional cutting of the tumpeng rice mountain after children had decorated their own cup-cakes to bring home with them and share with parents.
So, these have been busy months and very productive ones and we are happily settling into our new school home and eager to make the most of it, including welcoming more students into our new and much larger classrooms. Although the building itself is largely finished, the interior fitting out is not yet complete and we are still looking to raise additional funding for that and on-going running costs. We hope that this will enable us to continue to provide scholarships to the most needy and, at a time of increased cost of living, to offer quality education with fees that are as affordable as possible, so please help spread the word amongst your family, friends and acquaintances. You may also like to know that in a few weeks there is a great opportunity to boost the value of any donations as it will soon be GlobalGiving’s special Fundraising Day of Giving Tuesday. This will start at midnight in Washington DC, USA, Eastern Standard Time (EST) on Tuesday 3rd December 2024 and end on the same day at 11.59 p.m. EST and GlobalGiving will distribute bonus funds on donations made that day via our page at https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/loving-pre-school-education-in-java-indonesia/.
In the meantime, we remain ever grateful for your support and thank you once again for helping to make life-changing education available to young learners in Indonesia! Please let us know if you are in the region and would like to visit.
With gratitude and warmest wishes from all of us at Yayasan Taman Cipta Karya Nusantara.
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