Bell tolls for charity school
Evi Mariani, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
"Hey! This is a school, not a stadium!" a little girl shouted at her friends who were talking loudly as she was busy drawing.
It was indeed an elementary school but without the normal rows of kids in red and white uniforms sitting neatly at their desks.
Instead, a group of boys and girls aged six to 14 were scattered around a dim room on Friday afternoon. Some of them were concentrating on their drawings, some were running around, while their teacher, Kurnia Ferdiyanti, patiently taught a girl, who had her little brother sitting on her lap, to write her name.
The school is called the school for street children and is located under the harbor elevated toll road in Gedong Panjang, Penjaringan subdistrict, North Jakarta. The toll road provides the roof for the school and a number of squatter shanties.
The children do not attend public schools as their parents cannot afford the fees.
Rapita, 12, who lives nearby with her grandmother, Tonah, 60, finds herself excluded from the public school as Tonah only earns from scavenging for cardboard boxes. The boxes are sold by weight -- Rp 500 (0.06 U.S. cents) per kilogram.
"The public school charges Rp 150,000 for the admission fee and Rp 10,000 for monthly tuition fees. We can't afford it," Tonah said. "Rapita can attend this school for free and she even gets books and pencils."
Some other children are luckier as they attend public school every morning and then the school for street children in the afternoon.
"I attend the Al-Quriah elementary school nearby. But my parents told me to come here too as they say it's better than me wasting my time playing all day long," said Yanto grinning.
Kurnia said that the school has two classes: the morning class for under-fives and the afternoon class for children aged between six and 15.
"This school has three teachers and a principal, Pak Reinhart. He is the one who raises the money for the school from concerned individuals," she said.
However, she had no idea how much it costs to keep the school running per month.
"Lots of times the donors give us books, pencils and other things, instead of cash," she said.
Despite the service it provides to Jakarta's unloved and neglected street children, the school finds itself in violation of city bylaw No. 11/1988 on public order.
Skyrocketing housing prices have forced low-income people to set up their shacks wherever there is a plot of vacant land, and to play a game of cat and mouse with the city public order officers intent on evicting them in line with the city administration's anti-squatter campaign.
The school for street children is no exception.
"The principal told me before that the school could be demolished by the administration at any time. But so far, we haven't received a notice," Kurnia said.
She said that the people had read about the North Jakarta municipality's plan to evict the squatters living under the toll road.
Over the last two months, the administration has been evicting people from city and privately owned land, and also from along the city's riverbanks.