I am so happy now that I can go to school. My brother hopes that he can be a "KEMBALI" student as well

YKIP began its education scholarship program with YKIP/KIDS, assisting the children of the Bali bomb victims. However, it is very apparent that there are many indirect victims of the economic down turn that followed the bomb blast. As things stand now, many children have the potential to become school drop-outs due to the inability to pay, and will grow up with an uncertain future. The KEMBALI FUND is intended to help these children. KEMBALI means "return" in Indonesian - in this case, a "return to school".
 
The Indonesian education system has six years of primary school, three years in Junior High School and three years in Senior High School, followed by either a 4-5 year university degree program. There are also 1-,2-,3- and 4- year degree program in technical colleges and tourism instituitions.In Indonesia, since 1999, the government has mandated that each child must go to school for nine years. CLICK HERE for information on education in Indonesia. However, too many children are now dropping out of school even before they reach the end of Junior High School; some even are quitting in the primary grades.
 
We at YKIP are quite concerned about this phenomenon and have begun a new scholarship program for children in primary and secondary schools (elementary through senior high school). Pupils who cannot continue their studies due to financial inability shall be sponsored until the end of their junior high school career. We are looking for donors who would like to sponsor a child through to the end of her/his Senior High School years, although any size donation is most welcome.

One of the students with her family

We began this program in the regency of Gianyar, where 40% of the families are living under the poverty line. Gianyar is one of the richer regencies, so you can imagine that this figure increases greatly in the poorer regencies such as Karangasem and Bangli. We currently are supporting children in the regencies of Gianyar, Buleleng, Badung and Karangasem.
 
Many people in Bali, particularly in the regency of Gianyar, worked in the tourism sector prior to October 2002. Not only were those who worked in hotels and restaurants affected, but men, women and children who make handicrafts or are in the garment industry lost their livelihood when the 2002 Kuta bomb blasts happened. Almost every family in Gianyar has a major income earner who has been laid off or has no work due to the economic depression. "We have nothing", says one grandmother, who cooks over an open wood-burning stove, "except this simple hut on a tiny plot of land. My grandson, Wayan, used to work in a car rental agency but was laid off last year. His salary paid for his two younger siblings' school fees and uniforms. He's picked up a few odd jobs here and there, but it's not enough for school and now Made and Komang cannot go to school anymore." In Gianyar alone there are over 2,500 children who are on the brink of dropping out of school due to the inability of the family to pay the school fees. Even though we began in the regency of Gianyar, as of 2008 we are also sponsoring children in the regencies of Badung, Denpasar, Buleleng and Karangasem. We are looking for donors to sponsor all or part of the rest of each child's education (or until the family's situation improves

In 2006, the criteria by which the Indonesian government defined "Poverty" are as follows:
 
1. The floor of the home is made of earth, bamboo or cheap wood.
2. The living area is less than 8 square meters.
3. Cooking fuel is wood, charcoal or kerosene.
4. The family can only afford to eat animal protein (including eggs) once a week.
5. The family can only afford to buy one set of clothing per person per year
6. Each family member is only able to eat once or twice a day
7. They don’t own anything worth over Rp 500,000 (US $60) that is easily sellable nor do they have a bank account.
8. The walls are made of bamboo, wood or poor quality materials.
9. There are no toilet facilities.
10. There is no electricity.
11. The water source comes from a well, an unprotected spring, river or rainwater.
12.They cannot afford to pay for medicines at a Puskesmas (Community Health Clinic) or polyclinic.
13 Farmers have land less than half a hectare. For those working as a farmhand, construction laborer, fisherperson, gardener or other work have an income of less than Rp 600,000 (US $70) per month.
14. Highest education of head of family is 6th grade.
 
Each of these categories has a point value and each family is then “graded” and put into one of three categories: extremely poor, poor, and almost poor. These are simply guidelines that the social workers use to determine who lives below the poverty line. In the urban areas, most households will have electricity, and even in most villages in Bali there is electricity.. Most households have a maximum of 900 watts (as a comparison in the West 25,000 watts and up are the norm for a middle class home), which means they use very low wattage bulbs (not good for children to study by).
 
In most families, only one or two family members will be working. A family of four spends at least Rp 450,000 a month on food; this is the bare minimum. Religious and community obligations would account for at least another Rp 150,000 and more during the holy day seasons. Electricity runs about Rp 20,000. As you can see, if the average income is RP 600,000, then there is nothing left over for education, health care or clothing. GNOTA handing out school supplies As can be seen by the accompanying photographs, most of these families live in abject conditions.
 

GNOTA handing out school supplies

The regional government is doing what it can with the little that it has. The Indonesian National Foster Parents Plan (GN-OTA) program's coffers have become quite dry since the economic crisis began in 1998. Many of the "foster parents" were banks, successful businesses and independently wealthy locals. All of those sources have been forced to withdraw their support as their disposable income has been dramatically reduced in the last five years.
 

Fitting out the student for new shoes

The GN-OTA program used to be able to fully fund the students, but now can only pay Rp 90,000/year for Primary School students and Rp 120,000/year for Junior High Students. As you can see in the table below, this falls far below the mark. Families aspire to send their children to government schools, as the quality of education is usually better than in private schools. If a child fails to get into a state school, then s/he will go to a private school, where the fees are slightly higher.
 
The table below will give you an idea of how much it costs for schooling, including clothing, shoes, books and stationary. These figures are what it costs to school a child in Gianyar; costs are higher in the capital city of Denpasar and its environs (which is where most of the Bali bomb victim children go to school). For the first stage of this project, we worked together with the Gianyar Sejahtera staff as fieldworkers. As we procure more funding and are able to assist more children, then we will progressively bring additional fieldworkers on board (and they shall need to be paid ). Gianyar Sejahtera (Social Welfare for Gianyar) worked on BUIP (Bali Urban Infrastructure Project) with the World Bank in 2003 and did a poverty mapping of the entire regency. This survey was updated in 2005. The data collection was done by GNOTA fieldworkers, who visited every home and photographed them. All fieldworkers are given a small stipend to cover transport costs, which is prorated to Rp 30,000 per student. The head of the Gianyar Sejahtera team is I Nyoman Puja and he works tirelessly in going from house to house in villages that are far from each other and over rough terrain.
 
As February 2009, we are supporting 278 children with GNOTA/Gianyar Sejahtera, 30 Junior High students in Pemuteran, North Bali (who go to a a degree equivalency program); 127 children in Badung regency; 47 in Karangasem; 26 in Sanur and 8 who are sponsored outside the normal program.
 
The total for KEMBALI (as of March 2008) sponsored children is now at 476. In July of 2006, we streamlined the students we sponsored by eliminating those who did not make an average of 6.2 on their report card (average grades are 7.0 with 10 being perfect and rarely achieved). We will be doing this on an annual basis and giving children who really want to study the chance to make it in school.
 
Below are the average costs for what we provide. Please click here to see the specific breakdown of expenses.

	Annual school tuition fee (including building fee)	Uniforms, hat, shoes, socks, book bag	Books	Stationary, pens, vitamins, dictionary, computer class, etc	Snack Money (Rp 2,000/day primary and Rp 3,000/day junior high x 270 days)	Transport money for GS staff	YKIP Admin Costs	TOTAL
Government Primary School	Waived	Rp 297,200	Gov’t pays	Rp 352,800	Rp 480,000	Rp 30,000	Rp 280,000	Rp 1,440,000
Government Junior High School	Rp 1,000,000	Rp 302,200	Gov’t pays	Rp,496,300	Rp 720,000	Rp 30,000	Rp 432,000	Rp 2,980,500
Government Senior High School	Rp 3,584,000	Rp 390,200	Gov’t pays	Rp 317,100	Rp 720,000	Rp 30,000	Rp 470,000	Rp 5,511,300

YKIP works closely with Gianyar Sejahtera to ensure that the children are receiving the education that they deserve. The child's family situation are assessed each year to ensure that they still meet the scholarship requirements.
 
We invite you to check out the links below to a number of our donor circles.
 
Please help us help the children "kembali" to school. All sizes of donations are greatly appreciated.
 
Donations can be made to the YKIP General Funds Account (with the notation funds are for KEMBALI):

Please advise us via email of your transfer (info@ykip.org) so that we may verify and acknowledge receipt of your donation. Please include the following information with your donation:

• Name or Company (if applicable)
• Address
• Telephone number
• Email Address
• Sending Bank
• Date of Transfer
• Amount of Transfer
• Account funds were sent to (US Dollar or Indonesian Rupiah)

Thank you very much for contributing to our efforts.

L I N K :

Bali Dreaming - www.balidreaming.com.au Bali Dreaming is currently sponsoring 40 of our KEMBALI children and made a beautiful short film about this program (called BALI DREAMING) with Seri Films of Bali. We encourage you to go to their website; thank you to Bali Dreaming!   VOW OF POVERTY (www.vowofpoverty.com.au) is sponsoring 23 children in Karangasem and proceeds from their CD help to put children through school. Bali Contemporary Arts (www.balicontemporaryarts.com) gives a percentage of its sales of modern Balinese art to this program. By buying Balinese art, you are supporting childrens’ education. To see more photographs of Heidi Hornberger's site visit, click here.       To see more photographs of Heidi Hornberger's site visit, click here.     Sister School Program