UPH Provide Inexpensive Pre-School Education for Teluk Naga Children

This ceremony is a part of social responsibility programs held by UPH?s Lembaga Penelitian dan Pengabdian kepada Masyarakat (LPPM-UPH). Since 2008, LPPM-UPH had been executing various developments to this village, which involved many faculties in UPH.

Before making the school official, FIP-UPH had also selected five out of 15 parents to become tutors that can help the teachers educate and train 65 children in the village. This selection was done by FIP-UPH by training these parents intensively for more than one month.

?We trained them intensively and as often as possible ? once or twice a week. Here we taught them how to teach, taught them creativity, knowledge, and leadership so they can educate the children maximally,? said Head of Pendidikan Anak Usia Dini (PAUD) Program, Julita M.E., who is also one of FIP-UPH?s lecturers.

These tutors are mainly housewives and sell food to pay expenses. They voluntary help educate the children. When asked about whether or not they have enough time to do all these, ?We can manage our time, we can sell food while help teaching the children and do this in shifts. What is important is to help the children study,? said Arya, one of the tutors.

PAUD Program has the curriculum, which had been standardized according to the government?s curriculum and brings special attention to cheap education. One of the parents, Rohayah, said that she was helped by this cheap school fee and its close range from her house.?I feel helped by the school fee which is only as much as 15.000 rupiahs and I also only had to pay 150.000 rupiahs for two uniforms,? said Rohayah.

This school has the learning process that is divided into three parts ? it began at 7 AM and lasted at 3 PM. There are three teachers ready to educate these children in shifts.

These teachers do not hope for huge payments when they dedicated their life to teach these children. ?The payments are depended with the amount of children studying at school. We can get the payment as high as 600.000 rupiahs per month,? said Mariani, one of the teachers who is now on her way to graduate from Universitas Islam Nasional (UIN) and get a bachelor degree in english literature.