Students step to it to help save orangutans

Students step to it to help save orangutans

Chisato Hara, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

It's a bright, sunshiny day, and the campus is dotted with a few
students lounging on benches between classes and others strolling
under cempaka trees with backpacks slung casually over one
shoulder.

The buzzing ring of a bell breaks through the languid hush,
and beyond gleaming windows, classes stand to gather books and
turn in papers as their teachers get in a final word or two.

It's another typical day at the Cilandak campus of Jakarta
International School (JIS), at least in the high school area.

Deeper into the campus, beyond the covered cafeteria and
almost to the far edge of the premises in the middle school area,
classroom P2 is bustling with... mothers.

Markers, masking tape, plastic cups and scissors are strewn
about on haphazardly arranged desks, and a long table to the side
proudly presents a neat array of coffee cups, a gleaming
dispenser and a couple of freshly baked cakes. On the floor
towards one wall are at least a dozen lime-green plastic vats
heaped with smiling wedges of oranges.

There's a palpable sense of excited urgency to the mothers'
movements as they write names on plastic cups, arrange the vats
of fruit and arrange other supplies, intent on her own task amid
a friendly exchange with her neighbor.

A man in a black tee and shorts enters, looking wizened from
hours spent under an unforgiving tropical sun and sporting a mop
of pale hair a la Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi. This is Robert
Weber, middle school science and math teacher, organizer of
intramural sports activities and master of this classroom, which
is strangely filled this morning with a gaggle of busy mothers.

Almost on cue, the women rise with a bundle of cups, papers or
a vat of oranges and head out to the great track field, where two
bright-blue marquees await, shading a row of tables supporting
yellow water coolers. On the front of each table hangs a
multicolored student-made poster featuring the names of teachers.
Here, they unload and set up the supplies, filling each cup with
water.

Above the marquee and circling the track are similar posters,
all saying one thing in psychedelic letters: OrangaWalk!
It is Friday, Feb. 6, and the middle school is readying for the
biggest fundraising activity at JIS, the KDM/OrangaWalk walk-a-
thon.

Grade 6 classes, joined by a couple of Grade 4 classes from
JIS Pondok Indah Elementary (PIE) next door, will walk around the
track and the rear parking lot from 9:30 a.m. to 11 a.m. for the
orangutan at Ragunan Zoo and the Kampus Diakonia Modern (KDM), a
Bogor-based foundation that provides a home and practical skills
training for about 180 street children.

"OrangaWalk has been going on for about eight years, and it's
become a kind of tradition. There are kids in high school now
that remember being part of this back when they were in middle
school," said Weber, who organizes the annual event.

Sponsored mostly in bulk by parents and family -- although
last year, the walk-a-thon rustled up a single corporate sponsor
-- OrangaWalk is a display of student commitment toward community
welfare and the Indonesian environment. Last year, OrangaWalk
raised Rp 90 million for the street children and endangered
primates.

Around 9 a.m., Grade 6 students start trickling from the
interior campus, some kicking off an impromptu touch-football
game once they reach the open field at the center of the track.
At the far end of the rear parking lot, Grade 4 classes begin to
arrive, their single-file march headed by the respective homeroom
teacher.

Twenty homerooms are participating in this year's walk, or
about 400 students, and approximately 80 parents are manning the
checkpoint tables and the orange station, passing out oranges and
cups of water to students -- "No oranges, no drinking on the
track!"

The students take the event seriously indeed, as one middle-
schooler said to his buddy as they approached the track, "I don't
know about this year, man... I don't know how many laps I can
make."

After a quick huddle led by Weber in the middle of the track,
the students are off at 9:30 a.m. on the dot -- and they really
do take off, ignoring the "walk" in OrangaWalk and breaking into
a mass run.

Each student has a "lap-card" with their name on it and 20
numbered boxes, which are marked by their teachers or
volunteering mothers at their classes' checkpoint tables as they
complete one lap of the 800-meter course. The students may walk
more than 20 laps, but there are no prizes for those who walk the
greatest number of laps -- there is no competitive element to the
walk and there are no winners or a finish line.

The one real reward is a year-round trip to the zoo to cuddle
baby orangutan and to feed juveniles by hand.

While the dedication of students, teachers and parents is
evident, the atmosphere is akin to the festivity of a class
picnic, field trip or sporting event.

All don shorts, baseball caps, bandannas and student-designed
T-shirts in white, red, yellow and green bearing JIS's Komodo
dragon mascot, and some are wearing navy shirts with a swinging
orangutan. The latter look like they've shrunk in the wash, but
actually, it's the children who have sprouted -- they are wearing
the OrangaWalk shirts of two years ago.

The first student to complete a lap stops briefly at a
checkpoint table and rushes on -- in jeans and a polo shirt.
Others follow suit, singly, then in small groups, then en masse.

A few students, clearly friends, spontaneously break into a
race and are soon speeding along on the opposite side. One girl
with a bouncing ponytail runs by in rainbow-striped Pippi
Longstocking tights under her shorts, a small boy jogs past with
a quilted Uncle Sam top hat bobbing over his brow and others go
by, kicking up dust with their bare feet.

The odd mother runs, jogs or walks alongside their children,
and there is even a father or two on the track. One father-son
pair, their resemblance undeniable, jogs past in the same loping
stride. Homeroom teachers accompany passing students along one
length of the track, then immediately return to their checkpoints
to encourage or to join another group of students and back again.
By the third lap, all are ruddy and sweating from the heat -- and
still beaming.

JIS Headmaster Niall Nelson arrived as the walk-a-thon began,
impeccable in a sage-green shirt and navy tie with dancing gold
elephants, seemingly impervious to the tropical heat -- but not
to the excitement and enthusiasm at the track. Making the rounds
from checkpoint to checkpoint, he greeted each volunteering
parent in turn, while booming encouragement to passing students.

"It's a great opportunity for students to do something healthy
for themselves while contributing to community support," he said,
scanning the horde of walking/running students. "I thought I saw
my son go by." Then he headed toward the orange station and the
mothers passing fruit from both hands at once, cheering on
students by name.

The event is well organized, and is part of the middle
school's Student Action and Service, or SAS, community assistance
initiative. Headed by a steering committee comprising
administrators and teachers, SAS was established this year as an
umbrella program to consolidate the existing Learning Communities
(LC).

Each LC groups together 65 to 70 students of a single grade to
develop and implement community service activities, often
brainstormed by the students themselves. There are two LCs in
Grade 6, two in Grade 7 and three in Grade 8, each succeeding
grade involving greater student participation and contributions
as to their target activities.

Middle School Activities Director Andrew Ferguson, his
trademark whistle slung around his neck, detailed each grade's
activities from memory: Grade 7 works with Habitat for Humanity,
Emmanuel's Orphanage and scavenger children behind the Hotel
Kristal just down the road, along with Anne Wizer Green, designer
of the recycled Capri-Sonne bags.

Grade 8 works with the Pancaran Kasih Orphanage, has set up
the Kampung Kids educational and sporting exchange program with
the kampong next door and volunteers at a school for deaf
children; Grade 6 is involved with several animal care and
environmental awareness projects, and is in charge of the
OrangaWalk.

The PIE Grade 4 classes have their own Rainforest Program, a
social studies unit, and work with orangutan rehabilitation
centers in Sumatra and Kalimantan. The elementary students -- and
their teachers -- were devastated to learn that the Sumatra
center was washed away in a recent flood, but hope to help
restore it or at least, save the surviving orangutans.

As Nelson said, "There is a general impression that JIS is
removed from the Indonesian community, but in fact, the school is
deeply rooted in our host community".

In between running alongside students, maintaining water and
orange supplies, checking the students' progress on the hundreds
of lap-cards and thanking parents, Weber explained that the
OrangaWalk funds were used for a biweekly delivery of seasonal
fruits and vegetables to the Ragunan orangutans and a DanCow
formula milk drive for infant primates.

Over the years, the funds have been used to install a new
refrigeration system for the orangutans, most of which are
rescued as juveniles and are thus too old to be reintroduced to
their native environment.

In addition, the OrangaWalk funds support the various
community service activities under the SAS. Weber dreams of one
day establishing a scholarship program for the Indonesian staff
at JIS to help fund their children's university education,
preferably in biology and other disciplines related to
environmental preservation and conservation.

It is nearing the end of the walk-a-thon, but no students have
left the track to sit out in the bleachers -- they are still
going strong, as are the parents and teachers.

Middle School principal Geoff Smith jogs up in an OrangaWalk
shirt, joking and cheering on passing students, smiling beneath
his moustache.

In between paced breaths, he said, "The SAS focuses on
service, but places equal emphasis on the action side to things.
We want our students to learn and practice taking the initiative
in all areas -- their studies, sports or club activities and
community service".

He stops to take a breather, then continued: "We think this is
a great program, to start kids early in developing their sense of
community, of helping those less privileged...to nurture their
understanding of giving".

"The energy and dedication of teachers and parents have been
extremely encouraging. We certainly couldn't do this without
teachers imbuing their students with the enthusiasm for helping
others, to contribute to their host country."

And he is off, rejoining the students, parents and teachers
working together as a single community for the benefit of
another.