Running the school
Introduction
School complex “Kehidupan Anda” is a “Sekolah Swasta” or private school, functioning under a “Yayasan”. This gives us the opportunity to make this school available for both Muslim as Christian children and also teach subjects outside the “normal” curriculum. By doing so, we hope to prepare more children for a job when growing up, so they can take care of their own families and parents. We will also have the possibility to organize other programs outside the required Indonesian curriculum. We are thinking of environmental protection programs, foreign language courses, handicraft courses and information that can prepare them for a job in tourism. At this moment, not only the children in the villages are highly interested. Also many of their mothers ask if they could come and join a course in English or other subjects.
The school consists now of a “Nursery School” with 22 children, and elementary school with 142 children, a junior High School with 53 children and a “vocational Senior High School" 59 children.
Help from the government
The Indonesian Government supports the education by funding through BOS (Bantuan Operasional Sekolah). The money made available for schools is based on the number of students, not on the actual expenses of the school.
Smaller schools, such as in the villages therefore very often don’t have enough operational money to match the more professional teaching and educational tools the “city schools” have. Our school, although not small in size, does fall into this category.
Vision and Mission
From the very start we have decided that the vision and mission of this school would be to create an opportunity for the children of the villages to receive a high quality education against a small school fee. This of course is a “contradictory in terminus” or impossible.
Because of this vision, the school fee which is charged to the parents is low and includes the use of books and uniforms as well as all other costs that are made during the school year.
An other problem is that the school is, for the first 2 years, only partly eligible to receive help from the government.
But an amazing team of young teachers show their care, concern and spirit by teaching the village children, of which most are far behind the standard. They do this against a salary that is less than an unskilled day worker receives and teach far beyond their normal working hours.
We are trying to increase their monthly income by giving them incentives for extra hours, extra courses, private lessons and others. The money for the comes out of donations and the scholarship fund.
With help from outside, we can pull up heir salary, install a language practicum, start a library, take the children out for practicum trips and teach them about environmental protection and get more and specialized teachers in.
The total shortfall on operational expenses for the whole complex we face now is approximately 5 million Rupiah per month.
The Nursery and Elementary School
We started the nursery school with 12 children. The “class” has now grown into a group of 22 small kids, aging from 2 – 5 years old. Dina is taking care of them for 2,5 hours a day.
The elementary school has now 3 teachers, paid by the government, including the headmaster. The other 4 teachers are being paid from other sources, such as school fee, donations and now , recently, partly through the scholarship fee.
When “taking over” the existing elementary school we found an awful situation. Not only the abdominal state of the building, but the fact that most of the teachers did not show up for work and did not care about the children, who were running around the street like a bunch of wild animals. There were not enough books and the books that were there were in a very bad state. The head of the school was hardly ever seen, and refused to report anything that was supposedly been done with the support of the government.
It took some time and effort to get him out and get rid of the worst teachers, but it is done and we found some great people to take their place. Hermanto, Lanny, and Nayman have joined the forces. Dien, who was helping as an unpaid teacher for 11! Years has finally found herself a real job as well. Also Kristin, the only government teacher that has tried to keep 120 children under control is still working and enjoys the new wind blowing through the elementary school of Tongkeina.
The Junior High School (SMP) & the Senior High School (SMK)
As you could have read in other pages of this website, there was no high school in this area. The high transportation expenses and high registration fees made it merely impossible for many children to receive a higher education than the, at that time, very bad functioning elementary school. By building the facilities for a Junior and Senior High school, we changed their chances. Again, nothing of that would be possible if it were not for the teachers that with heart and soul dedicated themselves to this task.
The Teachers
At this moment teachers are being "shared" between the two schools. Although both of them have their own headmaster, Febrian for the SMP and Engelin for the SMK, there is further more to distinction between who teaches were. Mersi, Erik, Robi, Agus, Hengki, Ibu Somadi and Rahma.
The SMK
The Senior High school or SMK is designed to teach children a profession. The school takes 3 years in which the children, besides the standard basic curriculum are educated in some sort of job. For our school we have chosen for the tourism industry, with 2 main programs; hotel and resort based jobs and dive center based jobs. We have started with class I and both are evenly popular. In the Hotel program we have at the moment 32 children and for the dive program we have 26.
A new generation divers
Especially the dive program, which is unique in Indonesia, is of course close to my heart. In fact, I am teaching them as well in theory and to swim.
They are a wild bunch. The age differences in the group are big as well. We have kids from 14-23 years old in one class. The older ones see this new program as THE opportunity to find a proper job.
A great development is also the commitment which is already there from colleagues in the dive industry to provide these kids with an internship place in their resort for the second and the third year.
If you are interested in helping the divers to achieve their goal, you can help out by donating your not-used-anymore dive equipment to the school.
All these projects would never have been accomplished without the enormous support from my friends, family, colleagues and guests of Thalassa Dive Center. My office girls Sri and Nova have showed and still show an enormous loyalty although I drove them crazy many times.
On behalf of all the children in the region, I thank you all from the bottom of my heart.
