“Only the healthy and prosperous mother, children, and family can create generation that have great quality, character, and personality, also care for others. [sic]”
– President Joko Widodo (Jokowi), at the 2016 International Conference on Family Planning (SetKab)
SEEDS partner charity Saya Suka Membaca (‘I Love Reading’) works to improve opportunities for children across Indonesia to learn to read. In partnership with other organisations the charity provides curriculum, books and other materials and teacher training to teachers at pre-school and early primary levels.
Programs need to stay relevant to the ever-changing felt needs of a given society. Understanding the culture that we are serving from a sociological perspective is a crucial element to staying relevant with the actual felt needs of the times.
Many studies have linked exercise with higher quality of life not just in young people, but especially in elderly people. Most retired men and women in Southern Thailand don’t have much to do during the day and become very inactive, which in turn can result in reduced physical capabilities. This can also lead to feelings of worthlessness and depression.
Following three years of investment into Psychology lecturers’ English language ability and methodology of delivering their subjects in English, the time came to move on and partner with other faculties at the State Islamic University of Sultan Syarif Kassim in Riau, Indonesia. This decision was made in light of local lecturers becoming increasingly familiar and confident with using English as the medium of instruction for their classes, and also a number of program participants successfully applying for further study abroad.
One of the biggest challenges facing fishing communities is uncertainty. They live at the mercy of storms, stocks and prices. When the fish are close inshore and the weather is fair there is good money to be made until the market gets flooded. When the storms come, prices rise but boats can’t go out to sea and it is fishermen’s houses that get flooded. Wildly fluctuating income makes saving difficult and can lead to a debt cycle that local people call “digging a hole- filling a hole”.
Expanding our work in a new community characterized by urban poverty, we offered a teacher assistance program to two local kindergartens. Over the course of 3 months, we conducted workshops on teaching theories, human growth, class management and special needs with teachers who are dedicated to improving the welfare of young children affected by insufficient economic provision, poor nutrition, and lack of parental support.
2018 has seen the departure of some of the senior English Zone members, mostly in search of professional occupation or tertiary education in different provinces or overseas. While we are sad to be saying goodbye to the valued members, we are also excited to be receiving a new generation of young adults this year.
A new partnership has recently started between SEEDS and a university in Sumatra, Indonesia. A SEEDS consultant has started teaching in three different departments on two campuses and is investing in future teachers and other students.
In our increasingly digitized world we find ourselves enjoying “smart” technologies in our daily lives: smart watches monitoring our health, smart homes increasing our personal comfort and smart cities mitigating traffic jams, not to mention the hope that one day driverless cars will provide more safety and convenience on the roads. Not only are we seeing ‘smart technology’ for personal use but we also now have what we call ‘smart factories’.