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Volunteers try to close gap on islands
Come out and play: Cryptographer Sendi Fardiansyah leads a group of children to play at Pasir Putih Beach on Pari Island, Thousand Islands regency, during a program called Inspirational Community Goes Island Cruising (KIJP)
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span class="inline inline-center">Come out and play: Cryptographer Sendi Fardiansyah leads a group of children to play at Pasir Putih Beach on Pari Island, Thousand Islands regency, during a program called Inspirational Community Goes Island Cruising (KIJP). The program was held by a community focusing on education for underprivileged students in the regency. JP/Anggara Mahendra
'Does anyone here want to be a pilot?
'No! [Because] the plane will crash!'
'If the pilot is smart, the plane will not crash.'
'Yes, but he could still lose control.'
The cheery conversation reverberated through the classroom where students of SD 01 state elementary school, Pari Island, Thousand Islands regency, Jakarta, interacted with Larasati, or Lala, an interior designer who recently volunteered for the Inspirational Community Goes Island Cruising (KIJP) Batch 3.
Lala used pictures of a television, a cupboard, a couch, a vase and other housewares as media to share her experience working as a designer. The children were asked to design their own room using the pictures and Lala scored them and explained if there was any positioning mistake.
'Their enthusiasm increases my optimism about Indonesia's future,' Lala said, adding that the event not only improved the children's hope but also gave Lala new friends.
Last month, hundreds of volunteers went to the islands, which are part of Jakarta but have seen much slower development than the rest of the capital.
The volunteers interacted with children on six of the regency's islands: Pramuka, Panggang, Pari, Harapan, Kelapa and Lancang.
The three-day island cruising program allowed volunteers of different professional backgrounds to share their stories about what they do. After, they asked the children to write their ideals on pieces of fish-shaped paper and stick them on the school yard's walls. Teachers of Pari Island's elementary and junior high schools said they could see after the class that a creative method like the volunteers implemented drew more interest among the students, but they would need more time to prepare the teaching materials.
The program also brought environmental issues to the fore.
The volunteers acted as shadow puppet masters telling a story about a monster named Plastik (Plastic) who destroyed Pari Island's environment.
The KIJP also invited the involvement of parents, who sat with their children to watch a film about moral education.
Novi Safitri, an editor at a magazine assisting with KIJP volunteers' development, said kinship among people on the islands grew stronger after the KIJP Batch 2 visited, which raised awareness about how developing the islands should be done not only through its schools but also through the community and the environment, which initiated the school-community-environment (SML) concept.
The diverse backgrounds of the volunteers brought different types of educational topics to the children.
Rendy Pranata, a global teacher in Cambodia, for example, wore traditional Sundanese clothes to pique the children's interest and teach them about various Indonesian cultures.
Reny Fahdiyani, a general practitioner, said she hoped the program would be conducted continually because an unsupportive environment, family and community could result in the children losing their ideals.
Using a theory by Prof. Howard Gardner of Harvard University, Reny also had a chance to observe firsthand that the children had different kinds of intelligence, which, according to the professor, were: visual/spatial, verbal/linguistic, logical/mathematical, bodily/ kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal and naturalist intelligence.
The KIJP first visited the Thousand Islands in April 2014, thinking that difficult access and inadequate infrastructure would likely limit the children's imagination about what they could achieve.
During the initial phase, the KIJP only conducted its program at four schools on Tidung and Payung islands with only 27 volunteers. The number of volunteers rose to 94 during the second batch that reached six islands and nine schools. Now, the KIJP has 163 volunteers.
The KIJP plans to organize the program twice a year. The next batch is scheduled for August this year.
For more information about KIJP, follow its Twitter account @jelajahpulauid, Instagram account @kijelajahpulau or visit its website www.jelajahpulau.org.
