Proyek Kampung Loco

The project it all started with, and which we still find most important, is school.

The children are the future of the village. If they can learn a trade, they have a better opportunity to look after themselves and their family, which must make outside help obsolete.

We strive for the situation where our help in Kampung Loco isn’t necessary anymore, but we do realise that this will not be in the near future.

In Indonesia education is free. This sounds good, but actually the children’s parents have a lot of costs when their children attend school.

They have to supply the school uniforms themselves. In addition, they have to pay for writing and study materials as well as transportation to school and back.

*Ages can differ much; many don’t start school until later, because of money shortage. There can be children age 6 in the first group of elementary school, as well as 10-year olds, who haven’t been to school before.

It has occurred in Kampung Loco, that 3 children of the same family, but not of same age started their education in the same class at the same time, because we found sponsors for this family. Proudly they all started the first grade: a 6 year old boy, an 8 year old boy and a 10 year old girl.

The costs for the parents to send a child to elementary school are 30 Euro’s at the moment. This amount is relatively low, because the children can walk to the school in nearby Senggigi themselves.

30 Euro isn’t a lot of money in many countries, but for a lot of people in Indonesia it is more than they can afford. Which means a lot of their children cannot go to school.

The costs for the Junior High school are entirely different.

SDN1 Senggigi, elementary school number 1 in Senggigi.

The closest Junior High School is in the town of Mataram, which is approximately 20 Kilometres away. The children have to depend on public transportation to get there. This means higher costs, also because these children have to go there six days a week.

The costs for a Junior High school student are 75 Euro's at the moment.

To make sure more children from Kampung Loco can attend school, we have started to look for sponsors in Holland. More and more people are willing to support a child financially.

The money which is needed for a child’s education is not given to their parents. They can find it hard to spend such a large amount of money on education, while there are lots of other important matters to spend the money on. It may sound harsh, but we find that the money from the project can only be spend on the education of the children, and nothing else.

All supplies needed for school are bought, managed and distributed by “our 4 boys”.

With the parents we have the agreement that they have to stimulate their children to go to school. Children who don’t go to school, or stay away to often, are expelled from the project. This is done, because the parents sometimes keep the children at home to help around the house. They know that the support is not a gift and that the children have to attend school on a regular base.

The classroom of group six

In the last few years the support went very well. So well, that all the children of the village can go to elementary school, and finish this as well. This is a unique situation in a country like Indonesia, where an average of 10% of the children still doesn’t finish school, or doesn’t go to school at all.

At the moment we are trying to expand the number of children who go to Junior High school. The biggest problem is that the costs of education for the sponsors rise from 25 Euro's to 120 Euro's annually. We understand that this is a reason for a paying sponsor to stop the support. In this case we will try to find a new sponsor for the child. For the existing sponsor we can always look for a new child that has to go to elementary school..

Contributes to education in Indonesia

(2003)

The elementary school in Sengiggi uses a lot of time to creative subjects