SEEDS partner, Indonesian non-profit foundation Pendar Pagi, shares SEEDS’ commitment to help alleviate poverty in Southeast Asia through journeying with and equipping local people in the Riau province of Indonesia with applicable life skills.  One opportunity that is currently being developed is to come alongside poorer families in one of the province’s regencies and developing their potential and capacity for raising fish and aquaponic vegetables.  Although there are already fish farming businesses in this region, the integrated farming skills training program aims to assist families that are not able to afford the capital nor have the expertise to set up their own fish farms.

Currently program volunteers are researching local varieties of fish that are easy to raise, have a good market price, and require minimal space for farming.  Alongside this, several different types of vegetables are being investigated for growing in the fish pond water, deriving the necessary nutrient from the fish waste in the water.

Local people are not the only ones who will benefit from this initiative.  The program’s volunteers are all students interning during their final stages of study.  One volunteer with a background in fisheries has a heart to help those living in rural areas but without access to training to help improve their economic situation and quality of life.  Several other volunteer interns have expressed their vision of helping people in remote areas in the future.  For each one of these individuals, the experience of researching effective solutions to address poverty-related problems, coming alongside local poor families to journey with them in applying these solutions, and evaluating the success of these efforts are all invaluable in fulfilling their expressed dream of helping others. 

Currently volunteers are in the process of looking for local people who open to learning, not only how to raise fish and grow vegetables to help alleviate their economic situation, but also developing life skills and character that will point them to a better future.  So how do they find these kinds of people?  Volunteers go to village coffee stalls and drink lots of coffee or tea with folk as they ask questions and listen.  They show up at the local market, which is the social gathering place for the surrounding region, in order to interact with locals, hear their stories and invite them on this journey of growing life skills and character.  In conducting research and identifying candidate families for training, this program supports SEEDS overall aim by providing hope to poor families through the development of character and life skills that helps to improve not only their economic situation, but also their overall outlook for the future.     

Due to Covid-19 outbreaks in Thailand and up to 12 months of online learning, the football projects in south Thailand were not able to run for much of 2021 and early 2022. However, during the month of March 2022 (start of the summer holidays in Thailand) SEEDS workers were able to run a football camp for children and youth just outside of Hat Yai, in Songkhla province. This pilot project was made available for free due to our partnership with a local football stadium owner who wanted to help the children and youth in his community after a long lockdown.

The football camp was a resounding success, as we started with a small group of kids and then it ballooned to group over 30 kids each training session. The first group of kids must have enjoyed the camp so much that they invited all their friends! During the camp, the coaches were able to implement value-based coaching as we sought to improve physical fitness and skills, but also develop the character of the children and youth we worked with. Many of the children and youth who joined in the camp were from low income families and at-risk communities, so it was a privilege to invest in the lives of these kids during the camp. One highlight was to see how well the children played and behaved, during a series of friendlies matches toward the end of the camp. SEEDS workers are currently surveying areas and planning with local partners to identify the most needy areas to launch further football projects in. We hope to begin a few projects by September 2022 and to expand these projects step by step. Moving forward, this will be the cornerstone of our community development focus in Songkhla province.

The community development charity team were so glad to be back face-to-face in our focus urban poor community earlier this year.

We ran our six-week parenting course in both kindergartens between February and March. The team had great conversations with mums about the realities of bedtime routines when living in one room with a lot of noise and activity continuing through to late at night, about the impossibility of controlling snack intake in an extended family context, and about the importance of family meetings when conflict arises.

Afterwards the charity team had a lot of food for thought. This course is such a small beginning to the journey of becoming better parents. How can we really make the ideas we discuss there generate long-term change in family life? And importantly, how can we encourage the mums who attend these courses to go on to become agents of change, passing on what they have learnt to others?

Just at this time two new volunteers joined the team, both mums with young children themselves. Together they started regular intentional chats on the parenting WhatsApp groups we had previously set up, following up on some of the theory we had discussed during the course with practical tips and challenges.

In addition, the team decided to create an ‘empowerment partner’ role for mums who have completed the parenting course and are willing to run a concise version of it with a few friends and neighbours. A course guide and suite of supporting videos are currently being prepared.

It’s great to be back face-to-face, getting to grips with core issues, strengthening our empowerment approach and developing new ideas.

Anyone who has visited Indonesia will know that the country is plagued by a garbage problem. It is thrown into rivers, blocking drains and causing flooding. Single use plastic is burnt in neighbourhoods, filling the air with acrid smoke. Thousands of tons of kitchen waste, rotten fruit from wet markets and coconut husks are thrown into garbage containers where they are rapidly filling up the city dump. You walk down the street and inhale the smoke, you swim in the sea and fight with plastic bags and you watch people sort through the garbage containers searching for plastic that has a resale value. Sadly, after a while you stop seeing it in all its horror, you become numb to it.

So what can be done? There are solutions to some of these problems which SEEDS partner Yayasan Perahu Nusantara is advocating for:

Reduce single use plastic. Many parts of the world have a ban on plastic bags. Creating and enforcing regulations that ban single use plastic and incentivising environmentally friendly bags are the way forward.

Recycle. Plastics, cardboard, glass that have a resale/recycle value are already being collected by entrepreneurial men and women.

Organic waste. This needs to be separated at source and turned into compost, biogas, coconut husk mats and other products.

This is a massive problem that requires political will, commitment at the grass-roots and innovative solutions. Yayasan Perahu Nusantara has a part to play in mobilising communities and trialling innovation. Watch this space over the coming years for updates.

Five years ago I started to teach an English Conversation class for children in a village in South Thailand during their summer holidays. A local friend invited me to teach her children and their friends from the community in her house. The children enjoyed coming as they didn’t have much else to do except playing with their friends. I used objects and pictures to teach them English words in an informal, playful way. Most of these children don’t have the opportunity to study with a private tutor. I enjoy helping them. Some said that their grade in English class at school improved.

For the last two years it wasn’t allowed or encouraged to teach groups in communities due to the Covid situation. On May 17 many schools in Thailand will open again. The students are ready to go to school again after a long time of online learning. So my friend said now we could start an English conversation class with the children again. In the time after the fasting month of Ramadan ended and before school starts, my SEEDS colleague and I went twice to the village to teach the children. They were waiting with expectancy. On the second day more than 20 children came, ready to learn. Most of them are primary school age, some younger and some older.

My colleague and I used pictures to teach them action words. We played some activities and taught them songs that use these words. The local host served snacks and drinks in the break. The children seemed to enjoy the lesson and asked afterwards when we will come again. They are ready to have a regular English Conversation class. So we plan to start going to this village weekly. We trust it will help the children not to be afraid of talking with foreigners and to gain confidence in speaking English. This can help them in the future.

While a large percentage of the world’s youth have returned to school and social activities, schools in Thailand have remained online for the past two years.  There are signs that change may be coming, however.  Youth in underprivileged sections of the capital city are eagerly anticipating the opportunity to play football again soon.  After two years of quiet and empty football fields, signs of life are starting to appear.  

Over the past three months, SEEDs members in Thailand have brought together a group of local football coaches to kick off a new season of youth sports as the pandemic winds down.   

The past two years have had a generally negative effect on youth cognitively, emotionally, socially, and physically.  More than ever, youth need the opportunity to learn life skills and develop the character traits that will assist them when dealing with challenging seasons of life in an urban environment.   When youth are part of a safe and healthy football team, they will also grow in decision making skills, goal setting, self-confidence, and leadership.  

The local futsal network that SEEDS organized several years ago has been working behind the scenes to launch its seventh annual futsal league this May.  Six neighborhoods are contributing valuable assets such as their relational connections, football equipment, places, and skills to make the league possible without charging a fee.   During the 5 week futsal league, boys 13 years and younger will practice with their teams during the week, and come together to compete every Sunday afternoon.  

Everyone involved is eager to experience the challenge, the thrill, and the reward of competition again, something they have been looking forward to a long time.  

Twenty months have passed since one of our SEEDS worker had to abruptly leave South Sulawesi (Indonesia) where one of SEEDS’ partners, Hasanuddin University, is located. On his flight back to Indonesia at the beginning of December 2021, our SEEDS worker wondered how the project of developing a curriculum in Digital and Embedded System Design based on FPGA technology has evolved in his absence.

While waiting in Germany for his work visas to be issued, our SEEDS worker continued to teach classes online (cf. story in the news archive for September 2020). One of his students showed a big interest in learning more about embedded system design. Therefore, this student, in the absence of our SEEDS worker, decided on his own to begin a project for his thesis in the field of motor control based on FPGA implementation technology. It was a good opportunity to watch from a distance on how this student navigated through the various challenges of working on this project by applying all that he had learned. Communication during that time was mainly about giving positive feedback on his progress and asking questions that lead to new discoveries on overcoming difficulties.

Upon the return of our SEEDS worker at Hasanuddin University the student was in the final stage of finishing his project. Assisted by our SEEDS worker’s colleague the student had set up his project with all the necessary equipment. So far results had been satisfactory but there was one challenge left to assure that the quality of one of the signals that he measured was sufficient. He tried many ways to overcome the “noise” that he observed but nothing worked out. The complexity of this problem made it difficult for our SEEDS worker to give input from afar. However, his return to Indonesia was very timely. Together they analyzed the problem and as a result the student started to understand how to apply an important principle of building embedded systems that he missed before.

In about two months this student will graduate and can look back proudly to all that he has achieved. When this student receives his certificate our SEEDS worker will have a big smile on his face.

SEEDS partner Yayasan Tunas Aksara (YTA) has equipped 37 teachers from 20 schools in Timor, Eastern Indonesia, to teach reading effectively using its Saya Suka Membaca [I Love Reading] curriculum.

This partnership with the Indonesian Ministry of Education’s Program Organisasi Penggerak will see almost 1,000 children taught the foundations of literacy in a fun and engaging way.

An Urgent Need

Eastern Indonesia (NTT Province) has some of Indonesia’s lowest literacy rates, with 64% of children in primary grade 4 reading below the government’s targets. Low levels of basic skills affect the entire education system and the wider economy, so improving literacy is a key step to investing in the province’s future.

The program was launched in October 2021 with an event for head-teachers and administrators followed by 4 days of intensive, hands-on training for teachers. Covid-19 restrictions meant that most of the training was delivered by a local YTA team, with contributions from the Jakarta-based team via Zoom.

Teacher Testimony

The training was a great success, with teachers commenting on how engaging and active it was, and on the care shown by the YTA team. You can watch a brief video with a teacher testimony here:

A teacher using SSM in their classroom shared this with their mentor:

“Praise God, this is a child who I teach who couldn’t write at all. Since we’ve had lessons that are fun he works hard and is making good progress with his writing.”  

The current program runs until December 2021, but the government will extend it into 2022 if funding is available. 

If you’d like to learn more about the work of Yayasan Tunas Aksara directly, you can do so by going to our website https://www.sayasukamembaca.org/en/

One of the big challenges that SEEDS faces is to make a sustainable contribution. International development projects may seem fruitful and effective, but the real acid test is when the outside resources, both funding and personnel, stop flowing. At this point it becomes clear whether there has been genuine empowerment and lasting transformation, or not. Ensuring that development partners are self-funding is an important part of the development process. This is why a new café in West Sumatra is such an exciting venture. The café was started by a SEEDS partner, the Perahu Nusantara Foundation (YPN), to:

1. Model the business principles that YPN already teaches to groups of young men and women in coastal communities.
2. Provide employment. For example, the cook comes from a nearby fishing village. 
3. Provide a sustainable source of income. Profit from the café flows into the Foundation to support education, entrepreneurship and environmental projects in coastal communities.

Foundation staff are learning what it takes to establish a successful business. In the early months of opening they have had to contend with the twin challenges of too many customers and not enough staff, and a COVID pandemic which led to a ban on any customers! Starting a new business requires grit, a “can-do” spirit and tremendous resilience. This is just as true in the city as in remote coastal communities. 

So there are lots of encouragements with much learnt, but also continued challenges in order to make the work sustainable.

The quiet and empty football fields across the capital city are a constant reminder of the pandemic’s ongoing impact on young people.  The government’s pandemic restrictions over the past months have closed all schools nationwide and canceled all youth sports activities.  It has been difficult for many people to see beyond obstacles to opportunities.

SEEDs members in Thailand are still investing in local leaders and local initiatives to develop youth through sports during the pandemic.   Although the heart of sports training happens on the neighborhood field in-person, the wider network of coaches is an important place for training, for strengthening inter-neighborhood relationships, and for building excitement among teams. 

As the government imposed increasing restrictions during the pandemic, it became more and more difficult for coaches to see any hope of returning to the football pitch soon.   Therefore, over the past several months the local futsal network that SEEDS organized several years ago came together online to support one another, learn from others, and dream about the future.

At one such meeting, SEEDS members and coaches assembled online to learn from a local man with 20 years of coaching experience on the neighborhood level.   He shared about his own love for football, how he started his local team, and some of the challenges he faced over the years to keep it going.   After that, the participants spent over 30 minutes asking him questions related to challenges they had been facing before the pandemic.  The interaction among coaches and the learning atmosphere pointed toward a hopeful future for football on the neighborhood level. 

We are trusting that meetings such as these will encourage and inspire local coaches to see not just obstacles in the current season, but new opportunities in the season to come.   We look forward to the day when sports fields such as this one come alive again.