Indonesian English combo GLD ad for both online and at center

My name is Esther Manzanera and I am a WorkStudy Volunteer in Bali. I have been here for two months already and I could say that this experience has changed my life so I would recommend it to anyone! Since I arrived to the center I could see how easy was to help the children most in need. I have enjoyed the happiness of the kids which is is the most grateful thing that you could have. They don´t worry about the material things, about having the best Play Station or iPhone. They don´t need those things to be happy, they will be smiling everyday, even linving on the most basic conditions. The life in IHF shows you a different way to understand the world where you learn to value the most simple things!

My name is Rong Fu, as a work study volunteer in Jakarta center, I am responsible of teaching activities such as English and art classes and undertaking international assignments from four different teams in IHF. My initial purpose of volunteering is quite straightforward--to help those in need, but gradually I find that in the process of voluntary work, what I have learned is no less than what I have taught.What I have gained from this work study volunteer experience is learn how to swiftly accommodate myself to a new environment and people from various culture and background, and the most important, how a grassroots NGO as IHF, operates to realize its commitment to children in need.

My name is Yuxuan Zhu. Originally from China, I'm now studying Economics and Psychology at Johns Hopkins University in the United States.

Being a volunteer is not new for me; but this is the first time that I have devoted such intensive time and effort into an undeveloped country. I'm really touched by the kids in the center.

Being a volunteer teacher was what I wanted to do for a long time. Now the dream came true. As a counselor of overseas education, I helped Chinese high school students to pursue higher education in American universities. I wondered if I could do something for the students who lived in wholly different backgrounds. When I knew IHF had centers in Jakarta and Bali, I applied without hesitation.

I arrived at Jakarta center on March 3, and began to teach Chinese for junior high school students in the first week. In the following two weeks, I also taught English for the younger children from age 6 to 12. Familiar with common characteristics of teenagers, I got along well with the junior high school students, and they learned Chinese fast with strong passions and good methods. I was happy that they liked my class. It was a small challenge for me to teach young kids. Without any experience in teaching children, I prepared for the class more carefully. It was more difficult for us teachers to teach young children because we also needed to maintain discipline in the classroom. The goal of education was guiding students to study, think and explore. It's more important for children to learn something in IHF because of their limited learning resources and poor conditions. I felt fulfilled when the kids acquired English vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation that I taught.

Besides teaching and doing online tasks, I harvested friendship. Hanging out with the co-directors and local volunteers made me excited. We knew more about each other as well as the city in our spare time. I would miss the students and co-directors after leaving Jakarta at the end of March.

I learnt about International Humanity Foundation online. From a background of economics in college, I chose to come to a Southeast Asian country – Indonesia - to see the difficulty and potential of the economic and social development in one of the poorest places, and Bali in particular because I was interested in the huge economic inequality on an island thriving with tourism and traveler-oriented services - so far, Bali and IHF have delivered all my expectations.

Living in a small Indonesian village proved to be even more difficult than I thought. The level of underdevelopment is far worse than anything I have ever experienced. I have complained about the inconvenient living conditions and the often malfunctioning wifi. I have biked up the mountains on a recruitment trip and seen for myself the kind of mistrust the locals have in a US-based NGO like us. I have been constantly surprised by the local kids’ excitement upon seeing a foreigner and their lovely ‘hello’s and ‘good morning’s.

Volunteers at IHF Bali started an art project to decorate the center. We asked the kids to draw the ‘IHF hand’ on a piece of paper, write down their names and decorate the drawing as they wish. The kids dived right into it and created many remarkable drawings. Their creativity and imagination surprised me. Moreover, I was pleased to witness their excitement over such a small art project. Every day after the English classes, most volunteers complain about how hard it is to discipline the small kids and get them to focus on the class material. We college students are used to sitting in a lecture hall, staying concentrated for couple of hours and taking in as much information as we can. However we forgot that it is more important to encourage creativity in children. Many of them may not be good at following instructions, especially after a full school day, but they are eager for opportunities to show their individuality. In a collectivist country like Indonesia with strict cultural and religious constraints on personal choices, the small projects we create might give the kids the best moment in their day.

More than everything, I am deeply touched by some kids’ eager for knowledge and passion for English learning under an incomplete and shockingly corrupt public education system. This makes me realize that the free education provided by IHF Bali is working against the social norm and that we have a long way to go to prove our legitimacy and credibility. When we talk about NGOs and volunteering work in the US and other developed nations, we focus on the generosity of the donors and the sophisticated process of recruiting qualified volunteers, yet we have often forgotten the importance of reaching out to the locals and working our way best into the cultural and religious traditions in the area we work in. These traditions, however little merit they may have, are far more powerful in a country like Indonesia than our optimistic western ideology of free education, democracy, equality, and individual merits.

Many NGOs like IHF are great international efforts to relieve poverty and provide education opportunities, nevertheless we all need to realize that the overarching goal of our work is to serve the ‘local’ community, to benefit the ‘locals’, and through a long and hard time to influence the ‘local’ values in a positive way. And this is the hard part: to establish our trustworthiness in a remote Indonesian village and to get them to welcome our good intentions, however unrealistic they might seem to an Indonesian person. I am yet to reach this goal, but this one month experience at IHF Bali has definitely made the picture clear to me. I am very grateful to have had this opportunity.

I’m 24 years old, from England and a professional ESL teacher. I am interested in volunteering and NGO work because I like to ‘give something back’ and I would like to work for NGOs full time in the future.

Firstly, a bit of information about where I volunteered: the IHF center in Aceh is primarily an Educational center, although they are currently looking for orphans to live in-center. It holds free English, Maths and Computer lessons six days a week for students from the first year of Junior school to college level. It has many local volunteers who teach and help with the daily running of the center and two full-time local volunteers; the director, Philippe, and the co-director, Joko.

While I was at the center I taught English classes to all ages five days a week as well as helping with things such as recruitment campaigns in local underpriveliged areas and the running of events such as workshops. Teaching these kids was great fun because they really want to learn, they have a motivation which is really different to the children I have taught before and they are always up for a laugh. The recruitment campaigns were eye-opening for me because we generally visited slum areas of the city and it made me realise all the stuff that I take for granted back home.

I was also involved in a project where we visit a school in an area far away from the center twice a week to teach English and maths. These classes were crazy because sometimes there were over 25 kids in one class but awesome because they spent the whole time laughing and smiling. I made them run around a lot which might have added to the craziness but they were still pretty well-behaved when I asked them to be quiet or when I was trying to teach them something new. These were my favourite classes here because there is so much energy bouncing around and I’d always finish the two hours sweaty and exhausted but with a big grin on my face!

As the center is small it is a great place for your own ideas and input. Whilst I was there I spearheaded a project where I created a yearly curriculum for all the English classes for the center to use. I also organised putting on a charity fundraising concert which was stressful but really easy in a lot of ways. I had the idea for it on a Monday evening and by the Saturday night the concert had started! People here are really helpful and businesses and the media are easy to reach so it is comparatively simple for your ideas to come to life when you look at all the red tape you would have to go through in many other countries.

I wanted to volunteer with IHF because they offered a varied volunteering experience and the chance to learn about NGOs by doing international tasks daily online. I was involved in the fundraising, volunteer recruitment, media and university relations teams. I have learned a lot about these different aspects of the running of NGOs and it has been a great experience. It was cool to see the results of my work, for example in the fundraising team I was given a lot of freedom and was able to create an email template with photos etc for volunteers to use when contacting their friends and family about IHF.

I chose the Aceh center particularly because I wanted to experience a vastly different culture to my own. It has been fascinating learning about the 2004 tsunami as there is a museum and there are many monuments in the city. I was initially a little nervous about going to volunteer in a predominintely Muslim community as I thought that I might do something wrong or offend someone. However, it has been very enlightening, the Acehnese people that I have met have been extremely friendly and have been keen to explain their religion and culture to me. I have made lots of friends and I love the taste of Acehnese coffee! The scenery here is gorgeous as well, they have loads of white sand beaches and towering tree-covered mountains. On days off local volunteers usually come to the center on their motorbikes and drive us round the city or to the beach.

In general I have had a great time at the Aceh center and I can’t believe that it’s almost time for me to go! I have learned a lot about the running of NGOs and the processes involved in keeping a education center like this open. It requires a lot of hard work and long hours but is also very rewarding. Through my online international work I have gained experience in other areas apart from teaching. I have also learned about the pressures of organising an event and how to use them as a fundraising tool. If you come here I reckon you will have an awesome time and come away with a new set of friends and experiences just like me!

As I wanted to do something meaningful during my trip through SE Asia, I decided to teach English at the IHF center during a couple of weeks.
It was great to get an insight in the Indonesian education system, to get to know the kids and other volunteers, .. I decided to teach mostly the younger kids; it was a bit hard because their level is still low and I didn't know their language either so giving instructions, explaining games,.. wasn't always easy. Once you get used to this and you find ways to deal with this, the teaching is very rewarding because the kids are so enthusiastic and grateful for what you are doing.
I think IHF is a good organisation because it provides new, necessary opportunities for kids so they can hopefully enjoy a brighter future.

I first volunteered at IHF Jakarta while I was still an undergrad, and I think it was one of the best decisions I have ever made. The six children who lived at the orphanage welcomed me so warmly into their family, and I fell in love with them all within a couple of days. They are the most caring, funny, smart, responsible, mature kids I have ever met. The work-study program can be a little demanding, but I definitely learned so much more than I could have imagined about NGO management, volunteer coordination, and the kind of determination and passion it takes to keep a grassroots organization running. I would wake up in the morning, do some administrative work online, teach classes in the afternoon, and finish up some more administrative work, then hang out with the kids. They are always laughing and singing and goofing around- I miss them even now, and keep in touch with them when I can.

Teaching the classes are always a lot of fun too, and the students are very eager to learn. They are always hanging out around the orphanage, and always eager to communicate. I was fortunate to be able to visit some of the students at their houses, and saw that many of them come from the slum areas- which was a very moving experience for me.

I loved my first volunteer experience at IHF Jakarta so much that I returned to volunteer again in the summer of 2012. And I will hopefully be returning again in the future!