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Jakarta Post

Children, moms take literature celebration to deprived kids

Loud and clear: Afoan Arimiyas Kolo, an activist at Pademangan youth community club, reads a story to children during World Read Aloud Day on Jl

Indah Setiawati (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Thu, March 7, 2013

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Children, moms take literature celebration to deprived kids

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span class="inline inline-center">Loud and clear: Afoan Arimiyas Kolo, an activist at Pademangan youth community club, reads a story to children during World Read Aloud Day on Jl. Budi Mulia Raya, North Jakarta, on Wednesday. (JP/Indah Setiawati)

Some people may prefer watching TV or looking at screens to reading because they find the latter boring.

Over a hundred children and mothers spent Wednesday commemorating World Read Aloud Day in a slum area next to the Pademangan district office, North Jakarta.

The children might have sat on a humble canvas mat next to a smelly river, but their minds clearly wandered to imaginary worlds.

In small groups, they listened to a mother or a volunteer who read a story from a children’s book.

“Where can we see a hippo?” a group of toddlers excitedly asked in harmony, in the middle of a story being told by Afoan Arimiyas Kolo, an activist from the Pademangan Timur Karang Taruna neighborhood youth club.

He patiently answered the question, saying that they could see a hippopotamus in Ancol amusement park in North Jakarta. The small kids nodded and they quickly shifted their attention to a panda on the next page.

The two-hour activity ended with a distribution of donated children’s books, with seated kids patiently waiting for their names to be called to get a brand new book.

“My favorite story is Cinderella. I often use my rest time at school to go to the library where I can find many books,” Fanny, 11, told The Jakarta Post.

Sekar Chamdi, an Indonesian Literary Forum activist, cooperated with the neighborhood youth club and Sunda Kelapa Heritage club, a two-month old community that helps promote North Jakarta’s arts and tourism, in holding the event.

She said the children gathered every Thursday to get free lessons from the youth club, but they rescheduled the gathering to commemorate World Read Aloud Day.

“The mothers usually wait for their kids in the back,” she told the Post.

“But today, we involved them in the reading activity, so they can interact with their children. They read for the toddlers, while older children read for younger ones.”

Sekar hopes the activity can inspire parents to continue taking part in the reading activity, which she believes can create a strong bond between parents and their children.

“This may be the first time for us to hold such an event, but we hope to make it an annual celebration together with other reading communities,” she said.

Initiated by nonprofit literacy organization litworld.org, the World Read Aloud Day is a global literacy campaign that aims to support children by showing that they have the right to read, write and share their thoughts in their own words to change the world.

According to their official website, the campaign reached 35 countries, with 45,000 participants, when it first kicked off on March 3, 2010. Last year, it had spread to 65 countries and hundreds of thousands of participants.

Some communities in the country commemorated World Read Aloud Day simultaneously on Wednesday with various activities.

In Bekasi, West Java, Farah, a social studies teacher from privately owned Victory Plus school, celebrated the movement with
her ninth grade students by combining her lesson plan on bullying with the event.

Besides holding a poetry reading, she also organized her students to donate books for children in Papua.

“It was a fun day. The students wore costumes to resemble their favorite characters in books, such as Alice in Wonderland and Wizard of Oz,” she said.

Harun Harahap, the moderator of the Good Reads Indonesia community, said his organization participated in the campaign this year after seeing little movement in the country, compared to what was being achieved in other parts of the world.

Some community members read two children’s stories on a radio station on last Saturday, held a reading activity and book donation event during a car free day last Sunday and made a video project on children’s storytelling.

The Yogyakarta and Bali branches of the community will also hold a storytelling activity and book donation next Saturday.

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