Cub Scouts help poor students through paper drive

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.