Special disabled school faces community reluctance

YOGYAKARTA (JP): SLB Darma Putera, a school for the disabled, was established in the Semin subdistrict, Gunungkidul, to accommodate some 600 local mentally handicapped people in the region.

However, the school only has 36 students.

"The toughest task is indeed making local people understand the importance of sending their intellectually disabled children to the school," said Sutarti, 41, one of the teachers.

In this school the students -- together with two other deaf students -- are taught basic human skills such as how to eat, how to take a bath, how to get dressed and other simple skills including simple carpentry and land cultivation skills.

"The main purpose is to prepare the students in such a way so that they will eventually have the ability to at least take care of themselves," Sutarti said.

The school has seven teachers, including a headmaster and two teachers who are on probation. The headmaster and four other full-time teachers are civil servants.

Founded in July 1999 by the Darma Putera Foundation, the school initially used the Bulurejo I elementary school building as the location for the teaching and learning experience. To take into account the school's formally enrolled students, the Darma Putera Foundation ran their teaching activities in the afternoon, after school hours.

However, the school's elementary students, usually returned to the school in the afternoon to observe the intellectually disabled students participate in their classes.

"They made us as an object of amusement. Of course it disturbed the students. They could not concentrate on the learning activities," Sutarti said, adding that the foundation finally decided in 1993 to move the school to a house in Karangpoh belonging to one of the foundation's founding fathers.

Despite the shift, the students were unable to concentrate on activities there. The reason for their inattentiveness was not because the house was only a plain Javanese house made of plaited bamboo strips and wood, but simply because as it was located in the center of the subvillage, the house was too noisy a location to study. So the following year, the foundation made another move to a quieter house as humble as the previous address belonging to the parents of three of the intellectually disabled children. The foundation's schooling activities survived for two years at that address. The decision to build a proper school was made thanks to a donation of Rp 54 million from a Dutch non-governmental organization World Kenderen Netherlands through the Coordinating Board of Social Welfare Activities.

A building with four classrooms was built on a 3,000-square meter plot located in the subvillage of Kracaan in Semin. The school was officially opened on Dec. 27, 1997, as the SLB Darma Putera building. An 18 by 10 square meter orphanage for intellectually disabled children was also built two years later, with a Rp 71.4 million donation from the Jakarta-based PT ISM Bogasari. Opened in Sept. 1999, the orphanage currently accommodates 25 disabled children, mostly from the Karangpoh subvillage.

Sutarti said the greatest obstacle was finding donations to run the school, and most importantly to supply the orphans with food. All 38 students of SLB Darma Putera -- including the children at the orphanage -- receive their schooling and accommodation free of charge.

"They are all from poor families. Most of their parents do not even have a fixed job," Sutarti said.

The teacher said that things became harder as most disabled people were big eaters. She said they needed portions which were three times bigger than that of normal people. A minimum of Rp 4,125 million is needed every month just for food.

"Thank God we were recently given a donation of Rp 3.15 million from the Social Security Network," she said.

Sutarti, one of the original staff members at the school, is a graduate of Surakarta's School for the Disabled.

She recalled the times when she went from mosque to mosque on the eve of Idul Fitri, looking for donations from zakat fitrah paid by Muslims. Zakat fitrah is the tithe paid in rice or money on the last day of the fasting month of Ramadhan.

Sutarti said that it was a relief that logistic support sometime came unexpectedly from people outside the region. Passersby from Jakarta, Yogyakarta and other places often dropped by the school to deliver a sack of rice, a box of instant noodles or even educational toys.

"We're still worried about covering the daily expenses," Sutarti said.

Aware of the fact that there are hundreds of other intellectually disabled children in the region who badly need proper education, the school staff members -- including Sutarti -- are planning to make another door-to-door home visit to families with intellectually disabled children. The school considers it's important to do so to prevent such children from turning to a desperate life on the street.

"However slow the learning process is, they are still human beings. They deserve to be treated humanly regardless of their intellectual disability," Sutarti said. (swa)