CLEO Project to Increase Quality Life of Children in East Manggarai
Talent is the ability of someone that shows the capability that she/he has. It needs to be trained to get its maximal results. All people have a talent given by God since they were born in this world.
Unfortunately, not all places in Indonesia can make it easier for everyone to develop their talents. One of them happened in the area assisted by Wahana Visi Indonesia (WVI) especially in the East Manggarai area.
Seventy-one percent of villages in East Manggarai, East Nusa Tenggara Province do not have a place for child participation as a place for channeling talent, so children only fill their time to go to school, and have plenty of free time that is only used for playing, helping parents or just staying at home.
On the other hand, there are many potentials inherent in these children, but there is no specific forum for developing children's talents, while in the village there are many who have the potential to provide assistance to develop the potential for children outside of school hours.
To support increasing children's participation in developing potential within children, East Manggarai WVI Area Program (AP) implemented a Duta Anak program in collaboration with the CLEO Drinking Water Company (PT Sariguna Primatirta Tbk) in one of the East Manggarai assisted villages to help children recognize the potential that exists within themselves and needs to be developed as capital for children in improving their quality.
WVI AP Manggarai Timur chose one of the assisted schools as the target of the CLEO Project namely SDK Null. The consideration is because in this village there is no place for developing children's talent interests other than school. The hope of CLEO companies will change that occur in children, especially in the field of education and children's talents.
The initial stages of mentoring were carried out through talent interest mapping with multiple intelligence measurement media for all children in the Null SDK, such as Verbal Intelligence Linguistics, Mathematical-Logical Intelligence, Visual-Spatial Intelligence, Physical Intelligence, Musical Intelligence, Intrapersonal Intelligence, Interpersonal Intelligence, and Naturalist intelligence.
Children are then grouped according to areas of interest. Since January 2019, WVI AP Manggarai Timur has been mentoring children in several fields such as handicrafts, flute games, choirs, mime, traditional dances, and theater.
"This is very interesting, it turns out we can color it using grains," said Marsel (52), one of WVI's assisted school teachers.
He was so eager to take one by one the seeds, starting with green beans, kidney beans, rice, corn, soybeans, brown rice to color his pictures of trees and sun. He coloring while accompanying children who also learn coloring using collage techniques.
"Activities like this can train us to be careful, be patient, creative and also count, where we can color while counting the grains we put on the picture," continued Marsel.
The children are very enthusiastic in participating in each activity to assist talent interests because the collaboration of schools and WVI through the CLEO Project provides new experiences for schools to prepare children's groups as a place to develop children's interests and talents outside of school hours. It is expected that with this assistance, the school will continue the activities of children's groups to develop interests and talents, creativity, lifeskill, and others for all students.
In addition to the Development of Interest and Talent of Children through the container of children's groups, there are several other interventions carried out through the CLEO Project with schools, including:
- Community participation to be more concerned about children's issues, namely through collaboration in the preparation of Children's Reading Parks and CLEO supports the procurement of reading books for children.
- The procurement of various sports facilities such as ball, net, rackets, etc. has also been prepared for children to be used in sports activities.
- Procurement of facilities in the form of procurement of laptops and assistance for children to understand the use of laptops, so as not to miss the use of technology.
- Provision of various facilities and seeds to train children related to organic farming, so that schools also become a place to learn and develop organic farming.
"Horeeee ... we are very happy to learn to play flutes," said the children who joined the flute group on the sidelines of the flute training. "We students in all schools get one tape recorder each. This is a very valuable gift for us, "they continued.
Welcoming this, the teachers at the elementary school did not want to waste the opportunity, because every week these teachers routinely accompanied the children of SDK Null to be able to play the flute/tape recorder.
"I have been able to play a number of songs using this flute," one of the group participants gratefully said.
At the end of the project, the Children's Intelligence Celebration will be conducted, to ensure the continuity of assistance in developing children's talent interests, the East Manggarai WVI Area Program will continue to monitor, coordinate with schools to make an agreement to ensure the program can be sustained in the future.
Written by: Natalia Hethy Dudi, Staf Area Program Manggarai Timur Wahana Visi Indonesia
