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.