Manuksesa Children Project - Bali

4th of July 2011

2011-08-28T23:50:00.000-07:00

Heike and Rolf - two German teachers - joined this seminar. We love to have question time with the guests and we were very astonished to hear from Heike and Rolf that their hobby is to "speak without words". So they introduced us to the world of sign language which was for all of us - inclusive myself - so interesting!

After the seminar Rolf - who instructs
also sports in Germany - and Marsini - a talented sportive girl from our children project - played together badminton.

3rd of July 2011

2011-08-27T22:21:00.000-07:00

After a break of 2 months (the children were learning for school examinations and we have been also very busy) we finally met again. We received a donation from our longtime friend Karin who asked her friends for money for our project instead of presents on her birthday. We received 3.550.000 IDR from her! As a little "thanks" we sung "our song" for her and also I bought again plastic garbage from the kids.

20th of March and 24th of April 2011

2011-08-27T22:09:00.000-07:00

On this dates the children focused on collecting garbage in the village. On the 2nd date in April they made together with the staff of Villa Manuk and the head of the village Manuksesa a big CLEAN-UP. They collected on 24.04.11 98,5 kg plastic waste! Like always Villa Manuk bought the plastic waste for 1.000 IDR/kg and disposed it on the central waste disposal site.

30th of January and 6th of February 2011

2011-08-27T21:48:00.000-07:00

Steve with the assistance of Luh Budi h0ld two other great English conversation seminars with the kids. They older one were writing stories and presented them in the course.

23rd of January 2011

2011-05-26T03:31:00.000-07:00

Meeting with Steve
I was so happy that our long term guest Steve who stayed in Villa Manuk for 4 weeks wanted to join our children seminar for this day. You cannot imagine how great that was! Steve is a theater director and writer from the U.S. and his teaching was just amazing! It was a great chance for the kids to listen finally a native English speaking person and just to train the "th" was so much fun with great learning effects, besides all the other teaching. The blowoff was the jump in the pool :-).
Thanks so much for your great teaching and motivation Steve!
On the end of the course we collected again the plastic garbage from the kids.

21st of November 2010

2011-05-26T03:21:00.000-07:00

The last meeting before my journey to Germany. The kids were very happy to receive some nice presents (books, pensils) from the guests. THANK YOU! Like always we had a great time together doing our English conversation and we paid the plastic garbage the kids collected.

24th of October 2010

2011-03-03T21:03:00.000-08:00

There is a kindergarten in the neighbor village and some of the little kids in Manuksesa joining since June 2010. The Manuksesa Children Project sponsors these kindergarten-kids because it has - compared with elementary school - a higher entrance fee. We believe it is very important that the village children have the same opportunities like town kids to attend a kindergarten.
These little kids love to join our seminars, even they not always really understand what's going on :-).
We did our regularly program English conversation.

3rd of October 2010

2011-03-03T20:25:00.000-08:00

As a special program we practiced some very basics of first aid. In the village it is for example not common to use a clinical thermometer to check if there is a serious infection or not. Also they seldom disinfect wounds which tends to result many times in skin infections. We also installed a simple first aid set in Villa Manuk and invited every child to use the disinfection, band-aid and others if needed.

We continued our program labeling plants with 3 other kids+plants.

5th of September 2010

2011-03-03T19:44:00.000-08:00

Beside our lesson for English conversation we focused also on labeling plants in our gardens. The children chose the plants they wanted and with this program they learn about the plant names (English, Indonesian, Balinese and Botanical name), the family of the plants and also about the function and usage.

22nd of August 2010

2011-03-03T19:41:00.000-08:00

Today we had another English lesson based on the VCD "English conversation for kids". I am always happy to see how the kids love to join this seminar.

25th of July 2010

2010-12-14T06:52:00.000-08:00

Plastic garbage is a big subject in Bali and of course also in the village and we want to learn the kids that it is not good to see plastic waste all over and that we have to do something against it. That's why we arrange regularly clean ups in Manuksesa. Also on this day and even the head of the "Dusun Manuksesa", Gede Surit, joined us. We split up in 3 groups - one group with Gede Surit, the 2nd group with our gardener Komang Arya and the 3rd group with me. Villa Manuk donated 150.000, 100.000 and 50.000 Rp for the prices and "my group" was number 1 in collecting plastic waste. On this day we collected around 30 kg plastic waste which was disposed later on an official waste dump. I was very proud that I could motivate children from the neighbour village to join our group. In the beginning they were very critical looking me picking up waste and were a bit laughing about it. But after a while 4 kids joined us and were not tired running around looking for waste near the creek, at the rice paddy walks, at the street, etc.
All kids got also some color markers or pencils which were donated by guests.

30th of June 2010

2010-12-12T23:54:00.000-08:00

Beside English Conversation and collecting plastic garbage we do have another ongoing project for the kids. Every child of the Manuksesa Childrenproject can choose a plant in the garden of Villa Manuk and I will collect all information about the plant like Indonesian, Balinese, English and Botanical name and also to which family this plants belongs. I also print out general information about the plants in Bahasa Indonesia so the children can learn more about "their plant". Then we write together name signs for the plants, also with the name of the responsible child on it.

23rd of May 2010

2010-10-26T17:32:00.000-07:00

Another highlight for the kids: English lesson with Peter. Like many times there were guests of Villa Manuk joining the seminar.
Concerning garbage I was happy that my appeal seems to be successfull. This time the children brought directly some kilograms of plastic garbage to the seminar. After the English lesson we weighted their collected plastic waste which Villa Manuk decides to buy for Rp 1.000 (approximately 0,08 Euro)/kg.

9th of May 2010

2010-05-13T23:37:00.000-07:00

Meet again with Peter!
The kids were delighted to see Peter again who learned with them last year 4 times English and composed the song "Come on, let's learn a bit.." - and Peter was glad to see and hear that all kids still remember his or let's better say "our childrenproject song".
I joined the Earth Day in Ubud two weeks before and brought for the kids some information posters and stickers about environment.

18th of April 2010

2010-05-13T23:06:00.000-07:00

Beside our program "English conversation" we talked about garbage. The different kinds of garbage and which waste the kids should collect to sell it to me. Finally they brought this time the first plastic bags full of garbage which we sorted out together (some of the waste was recycleable material) and which I will bring to an official trash dump.

20th of March 2010

2010-05-13T03:01:00.001-07:00

The girls of our children-project are very happy! From today on they will have regularly Balinese Dance Lessons in Manuksesa. Their teacher Pak Nyoman is a very capable dancing teacher from the neighbour village Pakisan.
He will teach the girls twice a week, Saturday and Sunday afternoon. If it is not raining, the dancing lessons will take place in Villa Manuk.
And what about the boys? Good question :-). I also would love that they take dancing lessons but there are only a few interested, most of them prefer to play soccer.
Here some impressions from 2 dance lessons.

14th of March 2010

2010-05-13T02:02:00.000-07:00

Another Seminar with learning English. We follow the lessons of the "English for Beginners" VCD and I am happy how interested and motivated the kids are.
Also we do not stop to learn more about environment issues: I promised the children to buy their plastic garbage from their homes or what they collect on the street. 1.000 IRP for 1 kg plastics or "rest garbage" (= what is not possible to compost or to recycle)paid by Villa Manuk.
And I want the kids learn more about plants. So every child of the children project chose one plant in the Villa Manuk garden. I will provide the information of the plant name in English and the Botanical name and each kid is responsible for its plant to give it an information sign (made by our staff) and learn more about this plant.

21st of February 2010

2010-05-13T01:38:00.000-07:00

We continued our program "English conversation for beginners" and I am happy to see that most of the kids are not so timid anymore of speaking English.

7th of February 2010

2010-05-13T01:16:00.000-07:00

How wonderful to see the kids again after nearly 2 months!
I brought them a "present" = "Dental Plaque Disclosing Tablets" which were kindly sponsored from my German dentist. So that was a great follow-up for our dental hygienic seminar on 08.11.2009. The children were very surprised to find out how much "blue" their teeth still are. An impressive demonstration to make the children aware to take better care of their teeth.

13th of December 2009

2009-12-15T00:21:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-11T17:52:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-11T17:14:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-11T17:06:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-07T22:54:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-07T22:11:00.000-08:00

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

2009-09-18T05:24:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-18T03:40:00.000-07:00

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

6th of September 2009

2009-09-18T03:26:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-18T01:24:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-14T05:46:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-14T00:22:00.000-07:00

.... 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

2009-09-13T23:26:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-22T05:50:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-22T05:46:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-22T05:36:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-22T05:24:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-22T05:17:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-22T04:59:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-18T01:01:00.000-07:00

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.

Rotary Club Bali Lovina - Meeting on 1st of April 2009

2009-05-05T01:41:00.000-07:00

For my personal further education I joined a meeting of the Rotary Club Bali Lovina. The guest speaker was Asana Viebeke Lengkong

Here shortly the “I’m an angel mission”:
Empower communities to sustain themselves through a system that enables aid to be shared and extended to each member of the community. They do so by:
• Providing socio-economic growth through education
• Overcome resource scarcity
• Promoting health development
• Empowering the community to promote government funding

It was great to learn what is possible to do and hope in future also for a good cooperation with this organization.

2nd Seminar on 22nd of March 2009

2009-04-24T18:05:00.000-07:00

In this seminar the children brought other traditional healing plants which we identified and added them to our plant list.
Also I explained the children the last time that it is not necessary to grow the plants in new bought plastic pots or bags. It is better and cheaper to use old plastic pots/containers or use organic materiel like plaited palm leafs. So this time the children surprised me with organic pots: they planted the healing plants in decorated bamboos, coconut shells, plaited coconut leaf pots and plaited bamboo materials.
The homework till the next seminar is to collect more plants of Pinahong, Kaki Kuda, Sambiloto, Daun Dewa, Daun wungu.

1st Seminar on 15th of March 2009

2009-04-22T21:35:00.000-07:00

The aim of the next seminars is to interest the children in nature, especially in plants. For this we learn together the names of plants and talk about for what they can be used or what are their good qualities for the nature or for us human. With this knowledge we want to build up a small nursery, in the beginning for traditional healing plants and vegetables.

In the 1st meeting Beate gave the homework that every child should try to bring a plant for the 1st seminar. So on this meeting the children brought some plants and we made a plant identification. With this knowledge we generated a list, which I willupdate according what we learn in the seminars. Please contact me through our Villa Manuk Website if you would like to share this list.

Also we started a small experiment, that we will monitor the next months:
We filled two medium plastic bags with soil. In one of the bags with soil we placed in the middle of the soil some organic material like big thick leaves, in the other bag in the same position a small thin plastic bag.

01. March 2009

2009-04-18T03:12:00.000-07:00

We arranged our first meeting for the Manuksesa Children Project. All children who want to receive now or later help from sponsors came with at least one parent. Nyoman and Beate gave general information about the children project and explained the newsletter they sent to their friends and guests for fund raiser. Beate showed on the Laptop the Power Point Presentation about the project.

Regulations for the program:
• Honesty and cooperation on both sides
• Support from the parents
• Children have to join as much as possible the seminars to increase Environmental knowledge as well for better living condition
• Good tourism ethics
• Appreciate the special gift of getting support from sponsors
• Commitment of Nyoman and Beate to support this project without payment