13th of December 2009

Time to say goodbye for a few weeks... Our both children Narayani and Mahesa will fly with me to Germany to celebrate Christmas with my German family. So I was happy we could arrange another meeting with the children of the Manuksesa Children Project before my departure.
The kids all know that (most) of their sponsors are christian and therefore will celebrate Christmas. It was a pleasure for them to sing "Merry Christmas" to all their sponsors. Just look here :-).
We also arranged the new "clean up village list" for 2010. Every month different kids of the Manuksesa Children Project are responsible to clean up the village street. Also our Villa Manuk staff is joining this activity.

22nd of November 2009

I found some very good English conversation Learn CDs for children and we watched together this CD on my laptop. I stopped this program always after a few sentences and it was the first time the children were more motivated to communicate. They all loved it and looking forward for their next lesson. The children and I were very happy that on this meeting Beate Volkmer and her husband Guenther Luge joined, the co-founder of the Manuksesa Children Project.

8th of November 2009

Today I decided to interrupt the English course and to check instead the children’s teeth and explain them how to brush their teeth properly.
A few years ago I joined a social project during my time as GM in Gaia-Oasis. For a few weeks in 2006 the dental-hygienist Lina from Germany made a Caries prophylaxis and dental hygienic project with more than 500 children in Tejakula. And I joined many of these seminars and also checked hundreds of teeth at that time.

It saddened me to see also here in Manuksesa, that most of the children have big holes in their teeth, caries, etc. One front tooth of a teenage girl was in big parts destructed by caries. Due to the fact that the parents of the kids have no money they do not send them to the dentist and till now the village people have no access yet for free or cheap doctor treatment (we hope there will be soon a change).
So it is very important that the kids from beginning know how to clean their teeth.
For this seminar I bought for the smaller kids special children teeth brushes because in my experience they only get the big ones which are of course not appropriate for a children’s mouth. Also I bought some special children tooth paste so we could directly practice brushing teeth together.


All the children were very interested and hardly anybody of them did brush their teeth before correctly. Some of the smaller kids seemed very seldom to use a tooth brush, after we started to brush their teeth a few children’s gum directly started to bleed.
We all felt this was a very important and good seminar and hopefully we can follow up next time with somebody from the local health care.

18th of October 2009

It was the children's wish to continue with the program "Learn English". They do know quiet many words and love to learn more vocabulary, but it is not easy to encourage them to try to speak complete sentences in English. Also I found it not so motivating only to sit on the terrace or on the Bale Bengong, so we made this time a walk through the garden and tried to make some communication in English.

11th of October 2009

In the last weeks we received many paintings and one evening we made an exhibition in our restaurant Warung Bambu Pemaron where the guests could give their votes. Also from a few days before some guests were interested and voted the paintings. It was quiet difficult to find a fair system for the votes, because children from 6 years till some adults (staff Villa Manuk) were joining. So we decided to write down on every painting the age of the painter and the guests had 5 votes each to choose their 5 best pictures in consideration of the painter’s age.
The winners were:
Made Suka Artawan, 12 years; Made Sandi Harta ,14 years; Komang Arya, 31 years; Ni Luh Ariwati, 14 years; Made Satiasa, 9 years.
Because only two winners were present, the three other prices were taken representative by their friends or family. 5 of the big presents (pencil cases) were gladly received. Some of the other pencils and pens from the donation of Uschi and Wolf were given in the last seminars for those who made great homework.

20th of September 2009

On this afternoon we followed up with singing and learning English words. The children brought their homework (they painted again subjects which name they do not know in English) and they learned a lot of new words. Also for me very interesting – so I could improve my Indonesian vocabulary.
The children got this time from me the homework to paint a picture with the subject “My beautiful and clean village”. All the children from our project and our staff can participate in this painting competition.

13th of September 2009

In the last seminar the children got the home work to paint one or two subjects from words they do not know in English. So some kids were very busy and made a good home work with much more words. It was interesting for Peter and me which words they choose also that the older kids have already quiet some vocabulary.
Of course we chanted again “our canon” – the children just love Peter’s song and at the end I gave some prizes (from the donation of Uschi and Wolf) for very good done drawings on the work materials (from 2 weeks ago)

9th of September 2009 - Donation

The children will be very happy - this donation we received from Uschi and Wolf - THANK YOU!

6th of September 2009

After repeating the small conversation from last week, Peter surprised us all with a self composed song:

Come on let’s learn a bit
Cause learning is a hit
Say I’m a girl or I’m a boy
Speak English full of joy

Playing on his guitar he even taught the kids to chant this song as a canon. They never experienced this before and we all sing out loud and happy together.

30th of August - English and Painting

Our good friend Peter - a German teacher - will be for 4 weeks in North Bali. I asked him if he would love to help me in the project for some English teaching and he agreed. So first we split the groups. The smaller kids painted with me and the older ones learned with Peter. Later we changed the groups.
We are very happy that we received from very kind French guests some learning materials for children starting from 6 years till 12 years and older. I copied them and the kids could colour nice motives, also beautiful mandalas and train themselves to copy motives. I learned that they did not work with learning material like this before and they really liked it. Most of the kids brought the papers to do some homework.
Peter did a great job and made the children speaking with a simple game. "My name is... What is your name? I am a girl/boy. I like.../ I do not like. They had so much fun together and even the small kids were brave to talk English.

17th of August 2009 - Award for collecting plastic waste

One week before the Indonesian Independence Day we announced that we will reward those kids with a prize who will collect the most plastic waste from the village. (Only thin plastic which is not recyclable was allowed to collect). The children decided to make small groups and the winners collected more than 5 kilos, number two more than 4 and the 3rd group 4 kilos. My husband and I donated for them 100.000 IRP, 75.000 IRP and 50.000 IRP

17th of August 2009 - INDONESIAN INDEPENDENCE DAY

.... and a good reason to organise a village festival.
56 people – mostly village kids, some villagers, guests of Villa Manuk, my family and I were joining the games. Also many spectators enjoyed the competitions (all together more than 100 people) and we had a great time together.
One of the favourite games is called “Tari Butsal”. Two football teams – one without t-shirts and the other with lovely ladies wear. The football game has to stop immediately when music is played – then the players have to dance. As soon the music stops they play football again.
The present guests donated some felt pens and coloured pencils which were nice presents for the winners of the games - together with other small useful items for the kids from the project money.
It was a great event – with a lot of joy and laughter.

19th of July 2009

We finished in time our new buildings of Villa Manuk and now I can concentrate again on our wonderful children project.
Like I explained to the children in the last seminar, we bring the garbage program to "an end". That means we prepared the 4 garbage bins that the kids built and painted to place them in the village street. Some garbage bins have been already used and we cleaned them. Also we made a plan who will be responsible for the next months (till end of 2009) for collecting the garbage in the garbage bins.




We are happy that these two young men can enter now the high school - sponsered by the Manuksesa Children Project. From left - Gede Arta Yasa and Made Arista Merta. They just received the money for the school entrance fee and are very glad.
Luh Darmini got the information that she can join for free the high school in Sawan. The confirmation is still missing so we will see if she needs support from the Manuksesa Children Project or not. To learn more about the children please click here.

21st of June 2009 - ... and more about Waste Containers

Even we are still very busy with our construction site Villa Manuk Bambu it was so great to see the children again. I decided before starting anything new we should finally finish the rubbish bin project.
The older boys had to make new ones and the younger kids had the job to give the garbage bins a nice outfit. With a few colors and some paint brushes the children let play their fantasies and had a lot of joy.

End of May/June

End of May till middle of June the kids (like our own children) were busy with examinations and school performances. Also I was a bit ill so we decided to stop for 4 weeks and we will make instead more seminars during the school holidays.

24th of May 2009 – Organic Vegetable and Waste Water Treatment Garden

On this day we had our Permaculture Meeting in Villa Manuk and the children from the Manuksesa Children Project were also joining for some time. I explained them the system of our Waste Water Treatment Garden and Gede from Pegasus farm explained them a few basics about organic farming, also to our staff of Villa Manuk. For more detailed information and pictures please see the minutes of the permaculture meeting from 24th of May 2009

3rd of May 2009 – Waste containers

In one of the last seminars the children realized by their own that they need to have rubbish bins in the village if they want a cleaner village. So I told to the older children to discuss by their own how many they think they need, from which material, which design. I offered rest material from our building site Villa Manuk Bambu to use for the waste containers. On this day they started to build the first two containers with the help of Made “Robot”, our “good soul” of Villa Manuk.

26th April 2009 – Seminar compost and collecting garbage

On this little seminar I taught the children on many examples at our building site "Villa Manuk Bambu" which materials can be recycled in Bali, which not.
Also we talked about how we make here in Villa Manuk our compost and what are the advantages of having a compost.

24th of April 2009 - Clean up organized by Rotary Club Bali Lovina

Because it is always good to support environmental projects and to train the staff we joined the clean up program organized by Rotary Club Bali Lovina.
We - that was Gede Radita, our senior waiter from Warung Bambu Pemaron, Gede Suar and Made Sarpe from Villa Manuk (the so called “twins”) and myself. We helped in guiding children-groups from different schools nearby to clean up the beach. Like always it was just amazing to see how motivated the kids are. Later there were some nice games and painting competitions so we could learn a lot how to organize an event like this.

3rd Seminar on 12th of April 2009

The children and I did an excursion around and through the village of Manuksesa. Two guests of Villa Manuk joined our trip. Provided with a digital camera I divided them in two groups – the “bad” and the “good”. The “bad ones” had to look for something they dislike or hate, the good ones for something which is good or what they love. And then I taught them how to use the camera.
In the beginning they were all shy but after a while every child loved to make pictures. So they took more than 60 pictures and we had a wonderful walk together. For me and the guests it was very interesting to learn how the children see their environment and I was pleasantly surprised about their knowledge. What was quiet different to our “western thinking” – all children saw dry leaves as garbage. I was happy when I could see how they love and respect clean water and a beautiful environment. They all know that it is not good to throw away garbage.