Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Children of Tomorrow AIESEC UI Winter 2014

On the 7th of January until 7th of February 2014, AIESEC Universitas Indonesia held a project based on exchange (P-Box) called Children of Tomorrow (CoT) which concerns on the language literacy. In this winter, CoT was held in Rumah Belajar Proklamasi, Manggarai. Rumah Belajar Proklamasi has become the partner of CoT for around four times and now Rumah Belajar Proklamasi became the witness of the success of CoT for one more time.
It was approximately 3 months the organizing committees of CoT worked and prepared for the CoT to be realized successfully. In the first round, we opened opportunity for the exchange participants, volunteers, as well as the host family to join our project. The exchange participants were chosen by CV assessment as well as interview. Those who showed a high willingness to work and high sense of commitment were given the priority for this project. Meanwhile, the volunteers as well as the host family were selected based on their ability in speaking English, high sense of commitment, and their availability during the project.
CoT as one of the AIESEC UI P-Box invited seven exchange participants from Rusia, Belgium, New Zealand, and China to teach English to the children in Rumah Belajar Proklamasi. The main goal of CoT was to give a life-changing experience for the exchange participants as well as the children. In this project, the exchange participants were not only teaching, but also sharing their experience in their country to the children. They did the activities together, laughed together, and played together. From their interaction, their mind were opened toward something outside their country which they could never even been thinking about before. The experience teaching in the slum area with the various backgrounds of children was the real challenge for the exchange participants. Moreover, the culture difference was also the main issue that had to be faced by them.
            Besides teaching English everyday in Rumah Belajar Proklamasi, CoT also arranged the other interesting activities for the exchange participants to make their experience in Indonesia become more meaningful. Those activities were global village, fundraising, bonding trip, and many more. In the global village, all the exchange participants gathered and presented their own country to the public. On the other hand, fundraising was aimed at collecting money to be given to the Rumah Belajar Proklamasi as one of our attempts to help them financially.
The success of CoT was not apart from the contribution of our sponsors and media partners. Lois and International Language Program (ILP) Cikini have become our main sponsors, not to mention @AboutJKT and @anakuidotcom as our media partners. Without their contribution, this project would be nothing more than just a plan.  
As the Organizing Committee President of this project, I was very happy and proud of everybody who had given their hard work to this project. This is one of the experiences I would never forget in the future. In every step I take, I will always remember the time we spent together and the things I learned from you all. I really hope that the experience we all got in this project could teach us something to become a better person. I miss and love my OCs, EPs, Volunteers, and of course children of Rumah Belajar Proklamasi. Best of luck to all of us. :D