We are delighted to share a blog written by Caitlin Sukohardjo, a student at British School Jakarta who is part of a team delivering a Global Goals project for the 2018-19 Global Goals Competition.
Their project is among over 620 social action projects currently running as part of the GSL movement and we are excited to be supporting them to design and lead positive social change in their community.
Art students teach children how to art.
Project Overview
We have identified that in our local community, there is a lack of exposure to art for young children. As people who grew up in a culture where an interest in art is not often encouraged, we feel as if it is our task to encourage and nurture the next generation’s interests in the arts.
Our plan is to provide weekly lessons to these children and during these lessons we will teach them a variety of artistic skills. We will make sure that the lessons are fun but also appropriate for the children. We plan on teaching them how to use a variety of different artistic techniques instead of just teaching them how to draw or paint.
If the children struggle a bit, we will make sure to provide some assistance. Since some of us are able to speak Indonesian, communication will not be that much of a problem and we will be able to easily teach the children. We hope that as we continue this project, the children will learn something from us.
Our Journey
During our service activities, we have learned and developed a few skills from the experience of teaching children art. Firstly, we developed better leadership skills. Teaching a class of kids who are full of energy and enthusiasm may be hard to manage. Therefore, we had to learn to discover ways to be better leaders and to be stern and responsible while being compassionate and visionary.
Secondly, we also learned how to bond with the children. At the first few meetings, both parties were a bit tense and awkward as we did not know each other. However, this is a skill we learned that evidently improved over a couple of weeks. We now are able to speak to the children regardless of the language barrier, and we are also able to communicate well with the children to better understand what they want to get out of these lessons and what they want to learn from us.
The Next Chapter
In our project Art 4 SB, we teach the students art techniques and possible ways to expand their art knowledge and creativity. We use our skills learned from school and outside school to help them achieve this goal. I would suggest the people my age to be involved in similar projects in their own community.
By this, we can impact the community positively by starting with a small action which will lead to bigger a impact on the community in the future. We can use our own knowledge to help others that are underprivileged and contribute in making the world a better place. Make a small change by helping the community with our best abilities and passion.
The 2018-19 GSL Global Goals Competition is now open and runs until June 2019. If you belong to one of the 700+ teams of students currently delivering a social action project as part of the competition we would love to hear from you and feature your blog and project photos on our website to inspire others.
