In a quiet and secluded place in South Thailand, surrounded by locally grown lemons, cashew nuts, and paddy fields, stood a farmhouse owned by the head of the village. It was a haven for children seeking adventure and fun.

Four of us volunteers from the Foundation, conducted a 2-day English Summer Camp for around fourteen children, ranging in age from 7 to 12 years old in April 2023. A local friend cooked and organised the meals for the whole duration of the camp. The group of excited children arrived at the site with smiles on their faces and a sense of anticipation. They quickly settled their belongings into the rooms they liked, giggling as they talked with one another. The head of the village was happy to see the children enjoying themselves and brought his daughters to join the camp.

The first day kicked off with learning the summer camp song, listening to stories, playing puzzle games, and engaging in a treasure hunt. Laughter echoed in this quiet place as each group searched for and hunted the puzzle pieces they needed to form. Some climbed up trees to look for them, happily competing and teasing each other. They loved singing the camp song, humming its tune afterward. As the sun began to dip below the horizon, we all prepared for our barbecue time with them. Some children helped put the hotdogs on sticks, while others lit the charcoal. The head of the village and some adults joined as well. Everyone sat around the grilling area to enjoy our dinner.

The following day, the children woke up with brimming energy. One of us taught them a simple menu for cooking, and they enjoyed it so much that their stomachs were full after they had eaten what they had cooked. Arts and crafts followed, along with another round of storytelling, singing, and an English lesson on selling and buying fruits and vegetables at the market. At noon, everyone sat on mats to eat  lunch.

During this two-day English Summer Camp, the children engaged in an array of activities designed to spark joy, laughter, and motivation to love learning English. It all ended well, and we saw them with smiles as they went home.

The library is reaching into new communities as people from other neighborhoods visit and tell their friends about it. Last month a woman and her five daughters started coming to the library regularly and now they bring their friends with them. They play games and take books home to read.

Frequently there are requests for new books and many have been added in recent months. Also added to the library are games that challenge and enhance memory skills and these have been quite popular.

In a partnership with a local foundation, there is a Story & Play Group on Saturdays. People from the foundation along with volunteers from universities come to the library for a time of story reading, games, and a craft using pre-used items such as plastic bottles, styrofoam cups, and folded paper. The goals of this program include increased literacy and environmental awareness.

On English Conversation days, a mix of high school and university students, are fine-tuning their grammar and pronunciation while having discussions on various topics. They also enjoy learning through games.

Untreated tuberculosis kills nearly half of its victims in five years. The other half is left to suffer disabling symptoms, spreading the disease to as many as fifteen more people every year. Loved ones in the family are often the first to be infected.

Mrs. Yakeen lay on the floor of her village house last August, coughing day and night. She was too weak to walk, after tuberculosis spent five years consuming her body. In 2018, SEEDS health workers had helped Mrs. Yakeen obtain and start daily tuberculosis medication. If she had taken it for a certain number of months, she could have recovered. Sadly, Mrs. Yakeen complained of an upset stomach, and consulted a local sorcerer. He gave her a potion that made her throw up, declared her free of tuberculosis, and told her to stop the medication.

Without further treatment, Mrs. Yakeen grew sicker and thinner each year. Finally, she could not breathe. A sorcerer came to the house, but could not help. Her husband, in desperation, took her to an emergency room in the city. There, Mrs. Yakeen finally decided to resume the tuberculosis treatment that she had discontinued five years before.

SEEDS has helped to establish a tuberculosis bridge program designed for patients like Mrs. Yakeen. The program, called Jembatan TBC Kampar, now provides Mrs. Yakeen with transportation to healthcare facilities; training from an advisor she can trust; encouragement and accountability to maintain her course of treatment; and tracking of the illness to find and treat hidden cases in her community.

Jembatan TBC Kampar is currently screening Mrs. Yakeen’s family and neighbors for symptoms of tuberculosis. Eight-year-old Neeyat, her grandson, is unusually thin; he has coughed for months, and grew up in her home. Program workers transported him to government health facilities for testing and x-rays, and he was diagnosed. He has tuberculosis.

SEEDS and Jembatan TBC Kampar continue to bridge obstacles to overcoming tuberculosis in five areas: transportation, treatment, tracking, training, and trust. Meanwhile, Neeyat and his grandmother take their daily medicine to cure in a few months a disease that would claim their lives in only a few years.

A local Malay friend in South Thailand told me about her social project for the following Saturday. She likes helping people in need, even though she’s also not wealthy. Her plan was to visit 11 needy families in a district about 50 km away from town. She said compared to families in her own community, they are more needy. Then a thought came to my mind. We still had lots of donated second-hand-clothes at the foundation office. We wanted to give out most of them to needy families in a village near the office. But we could also give some of the clothes to these families. So the office staff sorted und packed all the clothes in smaller plastic bags. To make our visit worthwhile, the local Malay friend and I bought basic food items for these families, which we packed into food packages.

On Saturday, 3 SEEDS volunteers drove together with 6 local friends of another group to this village, 50 km away from our town. The lady in the first house had a dessert prepared for us, so we stayed there for a while to chat. Then a local villager took us to a few other houses, where we gave each family a food package and a bag of second-hand-clothes.

Finally, the local villager invited us to go to his house and have a meal there. We couldn’t drive there by car, so we all got on motorbikes and carried the rest of the food packages and clothes’ bags. It was a quite adventurous, narrow path which led us through the forest and rubber plantations.

We all enjoyed a rice meal with fish and other dishes. We had good conversations with the host family and were surprised how quickly time passed. Then on the motorbikes and back through the forest to the car. We were thankful that it only started raining heavily later. It was a good bonding time and meaningful experience to not just go on an outing together, but help needy people and bring them some joy and encouragement.

Cerdas Literasi or Smart Literacy (formerly known as I Love Reading) is one of the programs of a SEEDS’ partner, Pendar Pagi Foundation (YPP). Smart Literacy aims to assist communities, elementary schools and kindergartens to cultivate a culture of reading in children. This program equips teaching staff with child-friendly and effective training methods and teaching materials, like colourful picture books. Teachers are then able to present the process of learning to read and write in stages, making it fun for the children through active involvement. The teaching curriculum used is called “I Like Reading” (known in Bahasa Indonesia as Saya Suka Membaca  or SSM), and comes with a guidebook for teachers, visual aids and culturally-relevant picture story books.

First, the Smart Literacy staff determined which nearby schools or kindergartens could be invited to become Smart Literacy partners. Initial investigation took place in the rural and semi-urban areas surrounding the city of Pekanbaru; these communities have limited access to new facilities or methods that support education. Compounding the challenge to teach literacy skills is that many village children speak local dialects in their homes, whilst at school the language of instruction is the national language of Bahasa Indonesia. The kindergarten currently partnering with YPP is Az-Zahra Kindergarten in Tanjung Kudu Village, Tambang District. Implementation of the Smart Literacy Program at Az-Zahra Kindergarten began by providing levelled training to teachers beginning in July 2023.

When the new school year started in August 2023, the Az-Zahra teachers began using the SSM teaching materials with their kindergarten students. Smart Literacy staff members conduct regular visits to monitor the implementation of SSM materials. It is clear to the staff members that the teachers and students are already benefiting from the use of the SSM materials being used in the daily instruction. Teachers are increasingly mastering the teaching techniques and materials, and enjoy the teaching and learning process. The children are enthusiastic about their literacy lessons, and actively engaging to learn letter shapes and sounds.

In Thailand, the hot season and school summer holidays are traditionally from mid-March to mid-May.
This year’s hot season was one of the hottest every experienced throughout Thailand, including the southern region. Children from families with middle to high income families often have the chance to travel or attend tuition classes during the summer holiday, whereas children from low-income families often are left at home to their own devices as parents and families need to work.

SEEDS consultants run summer football camps for children and youth from such families, with the main aim to provide fun sport activities during the summer holidays. The one-month camp was made available for free due to our partnership with a local stadium owner who wanted to help the children and youth in his community. During the camp we were able to implement value-based coaching for the children and youth we worked with. Most of the children and youth that joined in the camp were from low-income families and although challenging at times, it was a privilege to invest in the lives of these kids during the camp. One highlight was how positively the children and parents responded to the camp as they continued to ask us “this was so fun, when will it run again?”

SEEDS partner Yayasan Tunas Aksara (YTA) has partnered with local education departments and local business PT. Kalimantan Prima Persada (PT.KPP) to train more than 75 teachers from 12 schools in three provinces in Kalimantan as part of the ‘Kalimantan Loves Reading’ project.

This partnership, now in its second year, builds on a previous pilot program run in three local schools. Following promising test results for students taught with the Saya Suka Membaca compared to pupils in control schools for the pilot program, PT. KPP and local officials were keen to expand the program into new schools.

In addition to training by YTA trainers from Jakarta and Eastern Indonesia, the program includes provision for ongoing mentoring of teachers in their classrooms by Area Facilitators, who are trained to mentor teachers by YTA staff, before being supported remotely with regular online meetings and follow-up visits.

The expansion of ‘Kalimantan Loves Reading’ is an important step to improving literacy education in rural Kalimantan, where widespread poverty and limited infrastructure make access to good quality training and materials difficult. 

This three-way partnership between YTA, PT. KPP and the local government holds great promise as a model for future partnerships by making training, curriculum and reading books available to teachers in remote areas where financial resources are limited.

The slogan for the teacher training was “Literacy Brings Transformation. Mrs Mersiana, Class 2 teacher from SDN 005 Kaliorang, said “After receiving this training I’ve learned about using letter sounds to teach children to read… and several creative ways to teach reading so that children will be more motivated to learn to read, and come to read with fluency and understanding, and come to love reading.”

A PT.KPP site officer said, “We hope that after this training, we will be more effective in fighting illiteracy, and that progress will be faster.” 

You can get a taste of the training by watching the video below from PT. KPP (Indonesian language – English subtitles available).

The Perahu Nusantara Foundation is on a mission to build environmental awareness in coastal communities and to have fun at the same time!

Children’s youth clubs that teach environmental awareness are becoming a popular way of educating young people about the importance of protecting the planet. These clubs provide a platform for children to learn about various environmental issues that affect the world around them and encourage them to take action and make a difference in their community. These clubs also help to foster a sense of responsibility, encourage teamwork, develop leadership skills, and inspire creativity among young individuals. The Perahu Nusantara Foundation has been running youth clubs in two communities targeted at children aged 5-11. These provide a fun place to play and learn about caring for the natural environment. Local volunteers partner with Foundation staff to run these clubs and the Foundation has invitations to start the clubs in new communities.

Another initiative being undertaken by this charity is the sewing of reusable bags. In areas with terrible plastic waste, these reusable bags have the potential to not only reduce single-use plastics but also act as a powerful educational tool to encourage people not to throw waste into rivers or the sea. The reusable bags will work in tandem with the community youth clubs to mobilize young people to take care of their environment and challenge their parents to do the same. Indonesian cities face enormous environmental and social problems, so catalyzing a social movement of local people who care about their community and environment can help make a difference in creating a sustainable future for all.

One of my friends, who is a professor from the university, always complains that many of her students have low motivation in studying, and it’s difficult to get them to attend classes and hand in assessments.

However, one day I joined the Korean Day in the university and I was so impressed with how the students prepared all the booths by themselves to introduce Korean culture to others, such as Korean letters, traditional games and Korean dances. They even made Korean food by themselves to teach the participants more about Korean culture. The most surprising thing I witnessed was a group of students acting out a 30 mins Korean drama with very fluent Korean.

The university has had strong connections with university and institutions in the Republic of Korea since 1989. Korean language has been taught in South Thailand for more than 30 years. More students have chosen Korean language as their major in past few years because of the influences of K-pop. Many secondary students dance and sing K-pop during free time at school, so a native Korean teacher was so surprised that many of the Year 1 students could speak Korean already and knew more about K-pop culture than she did.

Usually, we plan what we want to do or want to teach the youth in the community, but we never listen to their needs and step into their world to find out what their interests are. When they find something that they really like and enjoy, they can spend most of their time learning and practise day by day. It reminds me that we need to listen to them before planning our actions.

SEEDS partner, Pendar Pagi, is committed to seeing the skills and expertise of volunteers and staff used to empower the realisation of SEEDS’s goals in their local community. With the recent addition of a Physio and Occupational Therapist to the task force, market research has begun in relation to home therapy services. Anecdotes of neighbours and friends indicates that families struggle to care for loved ones upon discharge from hospital or after adverse health events. The patients also struggle to realise their full recovery potential due to limited rehabilitation services. Providing in-home rehabilitation services is something that both our therapists are familiar with from their work experience in Australia, and are eager to apply their knowledge in this new context.

This initiative will aid not only the patient, but also their support network, by educating carers about safe manual handling techniques and training them to facilitate rehabilitation exercises with their loved ones. Home therapy is designed to increase the independence of the patient, which in turn helps alleviate the burden of care on the family. Within their home environment, the patient’s needs can be assessed and therapy services can be targeted to facilitate re-engagement in everyday activities.

Beyond providing the necessary therapy to assist patients with their rehabilitation, there is the opportunity to reduce the burden on the health system by educating patients and their families regarding lifestyle and preventable factors that contribute to disease and mortality such as smoking, diet and exercise.

Currently, our therapists are still in the process of meeting SEEDS language requirements. However, there have been opportunities for them to voluntarily meet with stroke survivors, alongside their language helpers, to assist with the stroke patients’ rehabilitation as well as further their language learning. One such gentleman lives in a village forty minutes from Pekanbaru. The opportunity to visit this young man has greatly enhanced the therapists’ medical terminology and provided him with appropriate exercises for rehabilitation. Since their visits, the young man has begun dressing and showering independently. This has lowered his care needs and increased his sense of self-efficacy. Our hope is that this service will be made available to a much larger community of people following continued market research and the establishment of this new initiative.