It's not Easy Doing Good
I was discussing with pak RT about hosting a children library in the neighborhood the other day. I've been wanting to start this project and luckily he supports my idea. Most of people in the neighborhood are not well off and reading is not their priority. I would love to see that change, one kid at the time.
I know even if we dont charge them anything, chances are the interest wont be that high. In order to instill reading habit, it must be a free library, meaning we need sponsors. This is where potential problems rise. I'm not concern about not finding any sponsors. I'm more concern about close-minded people in the neighborhood who will object the scheme. Mind you, indigenous people of this neighborhood are mostly only having a secondary level of education and rather religious. I wont be surprise if some Imam would object the library and branded it as part of proselytize movement. It happened before in other area that utilizing the same scheme for its free library.
Proselytizing is a big deal in this neck of the woods. One word of it and parents wont let kids coming to the library. Therefore, pak RT is lobbying the imam and we are planning to use the community hall, located opposite the musholla, to house it twice a week.
Should every things run smoothly, we are hoping to start our library next week with about 300 books. Wish us luck:)
5 comments:
Great initiative. I'm sure the joint effort of both of you will be successful ( the Iman's influence in these matters of the mind is, eh, let's say "amazing" though). Children should be persuaded to read - once they've started they often love it for the rest of their lives.
PS.
By way of mail to bla@bla:
I would like to make a modest donation. I'll ask my son who is visiting this week to transfer the money on his return to Jakarta. If you agree with that please mention here the bank account or mail it to me.
great idea. i suspect opening minds w education counts as preslytising these days too : /
@colson, please email me at triesti (I posted it on your shoutbox, the blabla thing is just a blabla) Thank you so much. I really appreciated.
@john, well, at the other area, at one point more kids went to the free library than to afternoon madrasah, so obviously some imam got jealous and use the P-word. It's sad... and we hope it wont be like that over here.
@ triesti: I did send a mail to the uk-emailaddress and got this response:
"This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification.
THIS IS A WARNING MESSAGE ONLY.
YOU DO NOT NEED TO RESEND YOUR MESSAGE.
Delivery to the following recipients has been delayed."
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