6 months Volunteering at the NGO and Private school in Kerobokan

This has been my second time in Bali! The first time when I came here I was already falling in love with the Island, including nature, culture, food and the people. That time it was just on holiday, but in these past six months I had the chance of also getting to know the daily life of the local teachers and their work. For me it was always clear that I would like to help in a social project one day. After I had graduated from high school I was traveling around the world, but that did not give me the feeling that I had done everything I really wanted to do before I have to go to university. Very spontaneous I decided to apply for a social program, where I could work in a school. I would like to study for becoming a teacher, so somehow I saw this project as a possibility to have a look in a different kind of school system, to help, to get to know a different life than the one i have lived so far and meanwhile to find out whether this is a job that I could be happy with.

Most people probably think, that Bali is a nice place, because most of them come here for a holiday. But the tourists who come here and spend most of the time only in big hotels having a luxury vacation, miss the stunning original side of this beautiful island and the local people and their culture. I am very thankful that with this project I could have had the experience of an original life of the teachers in Bali. It felt like combining work, help and holiday!

The school complex includes different types of schools, starting from the nursery, kindergarten, primary school, junior high school, until senior high school. These schools are private, so there you find the kids who come from richer families. Normally the volunteers work in the classes until 8th grade. But the private school also supports the NGO School where families that can not afford a private school can send their kids. It is a really good project but unfortunately their are only two classes of the NGO and we were there just for 30 min every morning and after that we had to go to the private school, but there we did not feel as needed as in the NGO school. Anyway the work with the kids was great fun! No matter in which grade you teach they all are happy to see new faces and to do different exercises or games then in the normal lessons.

All in all I recognized that school in Indonesia is way more relaxed than in Germany. The lessons take only 35 min and regarding the work that the volunteers do it is more the fun part, including games or talking about things that interest them, for example the differences between Bali and Germany regarding life, food, and celebrations such as Christmas. A really interesting thing for me was to see how well the behavior of the pupils is. Beginning from kindergarten until high school they have perfect manners and treat the teachers and each other with a lot of respect! Also they are full of joy, what is nice to see and what directly makes you happy too! The organization of the school unfortunately was not as great as expected, so it wasn't possible for us to get some own little project as discussed before. Everything takes a lot of time and in the end the results are not as high as expected. But somehow this is Bali. Also as I said before, we did not really feel needed in the kindergarten, because the groups only have around 15 kids and most of the time there are three teachers anyway and to be the fourth person in the room does not give you much to do. Nevertheless it was surprising me how much kindergarten is like school in Indonesia. The kids already have real lessons like English and Mandarin and comparing this to the kindergarten in Germany, the kids there only play and just learn basic things and behavior. What the kids do in kindergarten here comes in Germany when you go to primary school.