Cub Scouts help poor students through paper drive

By Stevie Emilia

JAKARTA (JP): As well as help from adults, children can also reach out to show their solidarity with the poor.

That's exactly what local Cub Scouts members, comprising first to fifth grade boys from Jakarta International School (JIS), did recently. They held a paper collection drive to raise money to help poor students around Jakarta stay in schools.

Early on a Saturday morning, dozens of boys wearing colorful Cub Scout shirts showed up at the school's Pondok Indah elementary campus, with plastic bags full of old newspapers and magazines. Some smaller children carried the bags and weighed the paper with the help of their parents.

In the paper drive, the Cub Scouts collected old paper in their neighborhood to sell as scrap.

Although they are still very young, these children understand the message behind their activities.

"It's to help poor students... to help them not to quit schools," first grader Haru Zenda said shyly. He gave two kilograms of old newspapers that he collected from his house.

His mother, Yoshiko, watched her son from a distance. "It's great for him to join this activity. It teaches him lots of things: good teamwork, discipline and helping other people," she said.

The Scout movement was started in England in 1907 by Robert Baden-Powell, an officer in the British army, and has spread to more than 100 countries around the world.

According the leader of the local Cub Scouts here, Thomas Peter Bulling, the Cubs -- the name for younger Scouts -- were set up in the U.S. in the 1930s.

At JIS, the parent-teacher association started the local Cub Scouts club about 10 years ago. The annual fee to join the club is around Rp 500,000.

The club, which a current membership of 97 boys, has five levels. After completing the fifth level, the children can then become members of Scouting-USA.

The Cub Scouts is a club exclusively for boys, but JIS also has the Girl Scouts.

Bulling said the intention for setting up the Cub Scouts was to instill in children some basic good traits, such as respect for others and pride in themselves, while also teaching them to serve the community in which they live.

The participation of parents is crucial as the Cub Scouts is regarded as a family organization, and parents tend to be very active.

"With the Cub Scouts, children have fun with a purpose. It's more than just going out. It teaches them values ... It also teaches them that it's OK to be competitive in a healthy way," he said.

Cub Master Bob Gramzinski, who is in charge of the paper drive, said that all the money raised from the activity, which is held twice a year, goes to charity. "But the kids also help to decide (where the money should go) ... although there's guidance from parents," he said.

Lars Nydahl Jorgensen, whose 10-years-old son belongs to the Webelos Cub Scouts and his eight-year-old daughter is a member of the Brownies, the young Girl Scouts, explained that children could spend a lot of time with children from other countries and learn about their cultures.

"In the group that I am involved with, we have 12 boys from seven different countries," Jorgensen said.

He said parents also get a lot out of Scouting activities.

"We can spend time together with the kids around some fun activities," he said.

Apart from the paper drive, the Cub Scouts also organizes camping trips, where parents and their children sleep in tents and do outdoor activities together. It also holds a Raingutter Regatta, where the boys build small boats of 25 centimeters long, which they race in five-meter-long water filled drains.

During the paper drive, the Cub Scouts boys showed how serious they were by donating a great amount of paper. Nicholas Alexander donated the most, 53 kilograms of old newspapers and 152 kilos of old magazines.

All old paper was then sold for Rp 600 per kilogram, while the old magazines went for Rp 200 per kilogram.

The money would be handed to the Canadian Women's Association (CWA), which would then distribute the donation to poor students.

CWA has run a school scholarship program, entitled Caring for the Children of the Nation, in cooperation with the Satya Murakabi foundation, since 1995 to allow children from poor families to remain in school.

In the last school year, for instance, the CWA members, and others helping the program, provided school fees for 93 children attending school throughout the greater Jakarta area.

In its scheme, each sponsor is encouraged to make a commitment for at least one year, for a scholarship worth Rp 420,000 a year, or Rp 35,000 a month, to ensure that once a student is enrolled in the scholarship program, the funds continue until the student's education is completed.