Educate and Empower 35 East Bali Mountain Children

Story from a Jatituhu Primary School Student who needs your help to continue school: “If children my age didn’t attend school, I would teach them myself!”

When asked what Ketut would say to someone of his age who didn’t attend school, Ketut replied, “I would encourage them to come along and learn with me and if they refused to, I would teach them myself.”

Ketut is the first generation in his family to be able to read and write.

He is highly motivated and attends school because he would like to gain the knowledge and skills necessary to lead his family and his community to a brighter future.

When asked what Ketut’s favorite subjects are, he begins listing subjects as he enjoys school so much he cannot choose just one subject.

But, the sciences are most important to him as he aspires to one day become a doctor.

For Ketut, school is not just a place to learn, but also a place to build relationships and play with his friends.

He spends his break time in joyfulness with his friends as they play football in front of the school.

At home, Ketut regularly helps his parents with daily chores such as collecting food for their livestock prior to leaving for school. Both his parents are farmers and they own a variety of crops as well as some livestock.

Although Ketut aspires to be something different than his parents, he too enjoys farming and realizes its importance in sustaining his community and staying healthy.

Ibu Kerti is originally from Sumatra although she graduated senior high school from EBPP school in Ban village. In January 2005, when EBPP got funding commitment for Jaituhu children.the community of Jatituhu selected her (along with 4 others) as the most competent person to be a tutor in the system EBPP developed for all of their schools since launching Bunga School in 1999. Apart from being highly literate and even speaking some English prior to her training, Kerti was motivated and determined to support the children to a future of successful community development led by members of the community, for the community.

When she first began teaching in 2005, none of the children in Jatituhu could read or write, and had no knowledge on anything other than their daily chores to survive.

According to Ibu Kerti, the main challenge in the first few months of her tutoring was the fact that the students did not have any motivation to go to school as they were preoccupied with daily chores that they had done since they could walk, with other family members, and depended on for their survival. They were often late to school as a result of this, which is why the community later selected the best times for classes to begin.

However, she is impressed that very soon, due to the interactive and participatory lessons in each subject, all students were very engaged and motivated to study, with a thirst for more knowledge so that they could educate their parents eventually to lead the development of their Jatituhu community.

Ibu Kerti believes that the main skills the children here require for a successful future is good hygiene and the ability to solve problems, starting with basic arithmetic, especially to perform daily tasks (purchases at the market for example) more efficiently and ensure that they can be hired for a job in the future.