by Joel Bacha, Accelerator Project Director, Room to Read
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| @UNICEF/2018/STKIP/Sorong: SD Inpres 55 Klamono. School library after revitalization |
Getting off the plane in Sorong in March, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I was there to visit schools involved in the Australian Government-funded initiative: Rural and Remote Education Initiative for Papuan Provinces Program. Whatever lay ahead though, I was excited to see some of the adaptations the UNICEF team and partners had made to our school library methodology to meet the needs of schools in rural and remote areas with fewer resources.
Room to Read has had the pleasure of sharing our methodologies with UNICEF through our partner Yayasan Literasi Anak Indonesia (YLAI), based in Bali. Through our collaboration together, the UNICEF team and partners have developed 77 children’s books for the children of Papua and established libraries in 24 schools across 6 districts. It is this collaboration that laid the foundation for an incredible visit to Papua.
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| @UNICEF/2018/STKIP/Sorong: SD Inpres 55 Klamono. School library after revitalization |
Over the course of two days, we visited four schools. We traveled on bumpy, windy roads and across bridges hovering over rocky forest-covered ravines. Near Sorong, we visited SD Inpres 55 Klamono about an hour outside of the city in a semi-rural area and SD Inpres 7 Makbon about three more hours out in a much more remote part of the district. In the Jayapura area, we visited SD YPK Amai on the coast and SD YPK Wambenain the hills.
What struck me first were the children who were visiting the libraries – the smiles on their faces as they walked over to the shelves, chose a book and then sat down on the floor to read intently. When asking a 3rd grader at SD Inpres 7 Makbon what he likes about the library he answered, “there are so many books to choose from, I can read about anything. Even magic.” This is the same level of joy we often witness among children in other countries – Nepal, Cambodia and Tanzania, for example – when visiting the libraries in their schools. Similarly, in Papua, some schools had book check out systems set up for children to borrow books for one week at a time.
The main difference with the libraries in Papua were the resources provided by UNICEF. To promote sustainability, UNICEF provided schools only with the training and the storybook collection. It was then up to the school communities to provide the other resources. There, the schools had to get creative – many found ways to use their existing shelving to house the books, most schools purchased notebooks to create their checkout system and other schools involved persons from the local community to paint murals on the walls to transform the library into a bright and vibrant child-friendly reading space.
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| @UNICEF/2018/STKIP/Sorong: SD Inpres 7 Makbon. School library after revitalization |
The other stark difference that one will notice in all the schools we visited is that the libraries are functioning in a school system with very high levels of teacher and principal absenteeism. School absenteeism is a huge challenge in Papua and an issue that UNICEF and partners are working with the local government to address. In one of the schools near Jayapura, the 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade teachers were absent on the day we visited. On this day, these students had their textbooks open in their classrooms and were studying on their own without a teacher. To complement, the school security guard opened the library for the children to use during breaks. In this particular school, the magic of the library offered another safe child-friendly learning space for children to use when their teachers were absent from school.
Having been sharing strategies to support early grades literacy in Indonesia with Monika Nielsen since early 2015, it was wonderful to finally see some of those results in action. With the UNICEF program now in its third year, a trip to Papua to visit the program was a must.
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| @UNICEF/2018/STKIP/Sorong: SD Inpres 7 Makbon. School library after revitalization |
BACKGROUND:
globally, in the area of literacy, Room to Read collaborates with local communities, partner organizations and governments in 14 countries to ensure that primary school children can become independent readers. In Indonesia, Room to Read is currently sharing the lessons we have learned with Indonesia NGOs and local publishers to support two areas of the early grades literacy agenda: 1) fostering a habit of reading by establishing high-functioning school libraries and conducting effective reading activities in schools; and 2) increasing the amount of reading material for children by developing age-appropriate and culturally relevant storybooks. As the UNICEF program in Papua focuses on literacy instruction in Grades 1, 2 and 3 classrooms, at its core, our programs are highly complementary.
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