Citibank to launch Big Brother program

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)