#CoCommunity is a series in which we tell the stories of great causes in the countries and cities we love to our readers who may want to lend a helping hand. Read on to learn more about Taman Bacaan Pelangi‘s incredible work bringing the gift of reading to kids in Eastern Indonesia and how you can help them to reach even more.
Try to think of your favorite story books as a child. Maybe you were in love with Winnie The Pooh and Where the Wild Things Are, or perhaps you preferred The Little Prince or The Hobbit. Try to remember what it felt like reading those books as a child, or perhaps having them read to you by a kind adult who did all the funny voices. Try to remember how it felt, being transported by the words into a new world, one full of possibilities.
Now, try to imagine growing up as a child without any access to good books. For most of us, it’s hard to picture, but it was a reality that Nila Tanzil saw during in her travels throughout Eastern Indonesia. And it broke her heart.
Nila, who used to work as a communications consultant for some of the world’s top multinationals, first started traveling to Eastern Indonesia for the incredible diving. But as much as she enjoyed the beauty of the oceans, she became deeply saddened seeing that children in the small remote villages she visited had no access to something that had been so fundamental to her own childhood.
“When I saw the kids in remote villages in Flores didn’t have access to children’s books at all, I felt a strong urge to do something. I couldn’t imagine my childhood without books and seeing that these kids had never experienced the joy of reading really bothered me. I couldn’t sleep at night. I felt that I had to do something,” she told Coconuts.
That desire to do something resulted in the creation of a children’s library in Roe, a small island in Flores, and, eventually, the establishment of a foundation, Taman Bacaan Pelangi, which translates to Rainbow Reading Garden.That first library in Roe was built in 2009. And now, nine years later, TBP is on track to open its 100th library in Eastern Indonesia this year. Nila says that, despite the determination she had when she started the project, she never imagined early on that TBP would get to this point.
“I still remember talking to my good friend when I had this idea and he said, ‘Once you start a library, then two,then three, then it will have a snowball effect and, before you realize it, it will become big.’ At that time, I didn’t really pay much attention to it. All I wanted to do was to start it. Later, I found out that this initiative was not only nurturing kid’s love of reading and providing access to great children’s books for the kids in those remote villages, but it also changed my life and my perspective on it.”
Indeed, what started as a side project eventually became a full-time job. After seeing the reaction of children getting access to a library for the very first time and the joy they felt reading their new books in enraptured silence, Nila decided to devote her life to the cause.
She left her career in the world of corporate communications so that she could devote more time and energy to TBP’s noble goals, which encompass far more than just building libraries. She realized early on that it was not simply a matter of getting good books to the kids but making sure they had the reading skills necessary to understand and appreciate them.
Because, for many kids in Eastern Indonesia, simply reading can be a struggle.
“When we were about to set up a library in Atambua, the headmaster of a primary school asked me whether the junior high school students could also have access to the TBP library. I told him that the books were actually for the primary school students. Then I asked him why he wanted the junior high school students to also read these books. His answer surprised me. ‘Well, it’s because in my school, the first and second grade students still cannot read. They start to learn reading in their third grade. Then in fourth grade, if they’re able to read, even then, they’re not fluent’.”
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Nila cites an EGRA (Early Grade Reading Assessment) study that shows how big of an issue this is in Eastern Indonesia. The study showed that children in Java and Bali could read 59.2 words per minute, whereas children in Maluku, Nusa Tenggara and Papua could only read 29.7 words per minute. In terms of reading comprehension, only 46% of children from the Eastern Indonesian regions could understand what they read compared to 78% of their peers in Java and Bali.
Even more dire are the illiteracy rates in Eastern Indonesian provinces, which are among the highest in the country. For example, the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) found that 32% percent of Papuan school children under 15 years of age were illiterate in 2010.
Because of this, TBP has started their Basic Literacy Program. It has two components, a capacity-building workshops for teachers and a basic literacy course that is offered free of charge to help children who are illiterate or have low-reading skills catch up to where they should be.
“We train teachers in primary schools on the basic literacy teaching methods. We introduce fun and creative ways of teaching children how to read. Furthermore, we equip teachers with detailed lesson plans that they can use every day in their classrooms. We also provide students with books for them to practice writing and reading,” Nila explained.
Because the program is conducted after school twice a week and involves extra work on the part of the teachers, they are incentivized to conduct the program in the form of “sembako” (basic household needs, such as cooking oil, eggs, etc).
The amount of funding necessary to conduct such a program is obviously significant and Nila says donations are crucial to getting it off the ground so that TBP can expand it to libraries throughout the region.
What can you do to help Taman Bacaan Pelangi?
As huge book lovers ourselves, we here at Coconuts Jakarta are taking up TBP’s cause and are asking our fantastic community of readers to do what they can to help them expand their Basic Literacy Program.
You can donate to TBP’s literacy program through this page on trusted crowdfunding site KitaBisa.org
“Donations will be used to fund the workshop for teachers, print the books for teachers and students, and to “pay” the teachers their ‘sembako’ incentives as well as for operational cost, such as transportation, to these remote regions where the program is being implemented,” Nila explained.
There are also plenty of other ways that you can help TBP bring the gift of reading to more kids.
“For example, if you are a graphic designer, you can help us design our collaterals. If you’re a videographer, you can help us create a short documentary video, etc. I’m a firm believer that people can give back in so many different ways, other than through money. People can also volunteer for our organization and use their expertise to help us grow as an organization,” Nila said. (You can find more information on volunteering for TBP here)
Another way you can contribute to TBP’s mission is by using Travel Sparks, a social enterprise service set up by Nila that arranges private, tailor-made trip packages to Flores and Komodo National Park. Not only do the profits from Travel Spark go towards supporting TBP, they can also arrange for you to volunteer at TBP’s libraries so that your trip to Flores’ tropical paradise can be not just memorable but meaningful as well.
If you’ve read this far we hope that means you support what TBP is doing and will consider making a donation to Taman Bacaan Pelangi today. Even with 100 libraries built, they still have a very long way to go to reach their goal of bringing their libraries and reading programs to one million kids in Eastern Indonesia.
But we know they’ll get to the other side of that rainbow one day soon if they keep getting support from their fellow book lovers, like you.
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