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Art, trash and education: BGBJ collaborates with young artists to relocate free school
Subject to eviction, a local school is preparing to move to a new location with the help of several communities that are helping it raise the funds to secure a new future.
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Fun activity: A girl poses with a puppet in a photo posted on BGBJ's Instagram account, @thebgbj, on Jan. 7. (Instagram/The Kingdom of BGBJ)
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em>Subject to eviction, a local educational organization is preparing to move to a new location with the help of several communities that are helping it raise the funds to secure a new future.
Dubbed Southeast Asia's biggest landfill, Bantargebang in Bekasi, West Java, has been a center of attention of philanthropists for years. For Resa Boenard, a 36-year-old activist and founder of the Seeds of Bantar Gebang (BGBJ), it was a childhood home.
Resa spent her childhood in the vast area once dominated by paddy fields before her family decided to move back to Padang, West Sumatra, after spending around two decades in Bantar Gebang.
Often bullied by her schoolmates in West Java due to the lingering smell of trash on her, Resa initially strove to become a doctor.
"I wanted to help a lot of these poor people, and [my younger self felt] that being a doctor was the only way to do that," said Resa. "Since the age of 6, I have lived in Bantar Gebang. I know exactly the lives of children in Bantar Gebang."
Resa later realized that there were other ways to help the children in her community. In April 2004, she started the precursor to BGBJ, which was then called Sanggar Satu Untuk Semua (One for All Studio).
"I used to feel angry with God. Why can't I become a doctor to help people? But then, I thought, maybe Allah wanted me to help with a different path, so I returned to Bantar Gebang [to teach the children]," said Resa, who spent a year focusing on educating the local children before encountering her own educational impasse.
