Citibank to launch Big Brother program

JAKARTA (JP): Citibank employees will soon be roaming the city's neighborhoods in an effort to help children stay in school.

Citibank's Big Brother and Big Sister program is due to begin next month. A total of 180 Citibank employees have signed up for the program, which is part of the Community Care program the bank launched last February.

Citibank will donate Rp 350,000 (US$50) per year for each child in the Big Brother and Big Sister program. The Citibank volunteers will assist the children in managing the money as well as helping the youngsters with their studies.

Citibank, in conjunction with three non-governmental organizations which work with street children, launched its Community Care program last February in three slums areas in Jakarta.

A total of 700 of the bank's 1,100 employees volunteered to teach more than 100 children in the slums. Each of the employees will spend an average of 12 hours a year teaching the children. The employees also prepare the teaching material and create a curriculum for their students.

"I have a special experience, a kind of joy, in teaching these street children," Raimy, Citibank's head of micromarketing and the coordinator of the school which has been set up in Ancol for the street children, said. "I always feel compelled to come back".

The Ancol school is a five by seven-meter semipermanent building set amid piles of garbage gathered by scavengers.

This Rp 1 billion a year community program is run from a room in the bank's headquarters on Jl. Sudirman. The room has been transformed into an office very similar to a school principal's, with curricula and teachers' schedules spread about.

Citibank corporate affairs head Ditta Amahorseya said while this program could not reach all of the capital's street children, it could at least improve the lives of some of them. She said the program would continue for at least five years.

Jakarta has some 90,000 school dropouts. (04)