In Reply to: What to take to schools? posted by Balitravelbug on Tuesday, 27. February 2007 at 19:55 Bali Time:
Don't know why local schools should become a „tourist attraction'?
Try to imagine, how would YOU (as a teacher) feel, when every few days a group of tourists would come into your school/ class disturbing your work and the concentration of the children, which are there to learn something?
I visited a local school in North Bali last year due my sponsoring of the Helen Flavel Foundation, this is certainly a limited event and in a context of the sponsoring, never less I felt a kind of displaced there.
To explain, for the kids it's doubtless a nice change of the daily routine to have a Bule in their class and they are also happy and grateful for whatever you will bring for them, but at the other hand I consider it also as needless disturbance of their lessons and this is valid for the whole school, also the teachers will have to deal with the lack of concentration after you've left.
Lots of tireless people are struggling day by day to improve something for the education of Balinese kids, there are plenty of volunteers putting a lot of personal effort into this endeavour, don't waste the time of these people for sightseeing tours - there is so much to do for them which makes more sense!
My suggestion to you, in case you really want to help these kids support one of the organisations which are running education projects on Bali, to show up in a local school with some candies will not change anything.
There are projects to improve the access to education for poor kids, there are also projects to improve the infrastructure for school in respect to sanitary facilities, supporting learning material and books, there are projects for additional education, for medical providence, many of these projects are documented on websites.
You may have a noble intention, but there might be a better way ;-)
Best regards
Thorsten