Exclusive school reaches out to poorer neighbors

Tantri Yuliandini The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

"It looks really nice, I wish our library could be repainted, too," pony-tailed Wulan, 8, whispered to her friends as they watched the repainting of State Elementary School No. 12 Petang's library in Grogol Selatan subdistrict, South Jakarta, on Saturday.

The repainting -- carried out by teachers and staff of the nearby exclusive National Plus Bina Nusantara (Binus) School -- was part of the Binus middle and high schools' community service program.

The school's community and social services coordinator, Vivi Trenggono, said that the Binus middle and high schools had adopted School No. 12 Petang as their sister school in 2004. This was followed by the Binus elementary school adopting State Elementary School No. 8 Pagi, located on the same premises as the Petang school. Wulan us a student of School No. 8 Pagi.

"The easy walking distance between Binus and the state schools makes them ideal for our students to visit, as well as for our community programs," Vivi told The Jakarta Post.

Since 2004, Binus being organizing various activities for both its own students and the students of the state schools, and also the teachers and staff of both schools.

"We have an annual program whereby our middle and high school students share their knowledge with their younger brothers and sisters in the state school," Vivi said, explaining that she was delighted with the responses from both the Binus and state school students.

Binus has also organized futsal matches between the elementary schools and organized a poetry competition to mark Kartini Day.

"We ask the winner to read out the winning poem in front of our school, and this allows our students to see that the students of the state schools are equally bright," Vivi explained.

She said that she hoped the repainting of the library would be the first step towards other improvements in the state school's facilities.

"What we want is to increase the awareness of students here about library use, and we want our students to share their knowledge of how to use a library with them," Vivi said.

A teacher from School No. 12 Petang, Uus Sarip Hidayat, said that the library previously had some 400 titles, but that this figure had recently increased by 200 books donated by Binus last month.

"The books are now being cataloged by our library staff and will soon be added to the main collection," he said.