Ragpickers on the outskirts of Medan.…
I've been reading about SOS family support in Pancur Batu, Indonesia, for families that depend on ragpicking for their income, which is less than a dollar a day. This is from a report from September 20th 2007, which talks about the Playschool at Medan, which is free education made fun for children who live on the streets.
- Lisa
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Ragpickers on the outskirts of Medan, Indonesia.
I've been reading about SOS family support in Pancur Batu, Indonesia, for families that depend on ragpicking for their income, which earns them less than a dollar a day to live on.
This is from a report from September 20th 2007, which talks about the Playschool at Medan, which is free education made fun for children who live on the streets:
"There are some 30 children who assemble here in the morning and with the assistance of two teachers I provide them basic lessons through play and dance," says Duma Hasibuan who runs a play school with assistance from SOS Desa Taruna Indonesia at a small village near Medan. She is supported by SOS Children's Village Medan to run this school.
Duma uses two rooms of her home as a classroom. There are an open space in front of the house where children play. A nursery teacher from SOS Children's Village Medan come regularly to provide her basic teaching methods suitable for the small children.
Her neighbour Jimu is very happy that she has taken the initiative to teach the children of this poor locality. People in this village generally are daily wagers or have small shops and there are no schools in the vicinity. The children have to peddle far to attend the school in other villages or Medan city suburbs.
SOS Children's Village Medan has been established in the aftermath of tsunami where 80 orphaned children are taken care of.
- Mary
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A portrait of a girl writing in Children's Village Bujumbura, Burundi.
When the school system was established in Burundi, only boys were accepted to school. This is a remarkable fact and I was compelled to find out more becasue of it. It was several decades later that girls got the right to go to school. Today, there is, officially, no gender discrimination when it comes to school education. However, two key factors prevent girls from going to school like boys.
One is the sociocultural factors. A certain mentality keeps girls exclusively in the mother's and wife's roles. Thery are initiated only into domestic and rural works very early, to be well prepared once she is married.
The second is financial factors. Many parents cannot afford the high school fees and the costs of school books and stationary. In these conditions, not all children can go to school and the parents always privilege boys.
In rural areas, even though the girls go to school, the heavy workload of women obliges them to resort to their daughters. The girls have to leave school to accompany their mothers to the fields, to the river (to fetch water) or simply to prepare the meal at home.
During the last 25 years, several actions were taken to increase the schooling rate of girls. Nevertheless, the statistics available show that the school rate of the girls always remains lower than that of the boys. The disparities between the two genders are still strong, even though the distance begins to decrease.
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