Dear Les Village,
We are glad that you like your new road. It took a lot of hard work to
make and we are glad that we were able to help.Who is kudeta and I'm an angel. Did they fund the road too?
KU DE TA is a name of a very famous restaurant club located by the beach in Seminyak area. I'm an angel is Ku de ta's fundraising group who supported all my program, they have matched your fund to meet all the costs beside the material cost of the road which consist of cement, sand and the food for work which was allocated for your funding. I’m an angel, Give back to Bali would then fund the food (mixed rice and milk) for the children each time we visited them. They also share the operation cost, and mostly they appreciate very much all your efforts to do fundraising for the people to help build their road.
It's been fun watching the progress of the road. We would like to continue to learn about you and your village.
We have some questions for you:
Is it easier to travel with the new road?
Yes, it has been much easier for us to travel on the new road, it make our life easier. We can transport our produce much easier and get a better price from the buyers
Is the road done or are you going to extend it further? We would love to extend our road further to be able to reach our brothers and sisters who live across our hamlet, although we share the same hamlet but we need a bridge to connect us with them
Will you build other roads? Yes if have fund to connect our road with the road to the village to make our access more easier
Do any vehicles travel on the road? Yes, we now can access the road with motorcycle and in emergency we can also use 4 wheel car, but the road is very steep and a bit dangerous, we have to be very carefull when we use the road
How many packs of cement did you actually use? So far we have finished 271 sack of cement and we will need around 50 packs more to just finished the 800 meters. We thought that we only have 700 meters road but apparently the road was about 800 meters long
Enjoy the road and we hope to hear from you soon.
Ms. G.'s Fourth Grade Class
Is the road finished?
We have not yet completed the entire road we originally planned
Will people drive on the road? Yes, although the road is steep and a bit dangerous
How long did it take you to build the road? We started working on July 30, 2006 and up to now we still have about 50 meters to go.
How many people helped to build it?
On average 60 to 70 people and sometimes the children help us if they school holiday
How long is the road? 800 meters
When did you start building it?
July 30, 2006
The kids love looking at the pictures! Thank you
Miss Senesi
Grade 1
Dear Les village,
How much time do you spend working on the road each day?
On everage 4 hours a day, 2 to 3 times a week
Why don't you use machines on the road?
We couldn’t afford having machines because we will need a huge machineries to do our road, we have to build the road edge and that is the most difficult part of our job because the area is steep and dangerous. We have to cut some trees, and digged a huge stone and crushed the stone with big hammer to chunks and put them on top of compacted soil one by one so that it is flat and even.
Are people not working other jobs when they are working on the road?
All of us are farmers and we would take half day off from farming if we are woBrking on the road
How long will it take to walk from one end of the road to the other?
Before the road is built, it took us about 30 to 40 minutes to go down the hill and 1 hour to go up the hill, and now we need only to walk around 15 to 20 minutes to go each way, but of course for people who are not used to hiking, it will take them longer to walk up the hill as they have to walk very slow specially on the steep part of the road.
How many people helped in doing the work?
How much progress did you make each day?
Depending on the weather and how steep the road is in some parts, it can be 5 meters one day and 20 meters another day.
Were the kids allowed to help?
Yes in some areas that are not too dangerous
These questions were asked by two second grade classrooms, Mr. Krane's and Ms. Morgese's, from the Vinson Owen school.
Dear Les Village,
Have you finished paving the road? Will you send us a video of the completed work? We will send you a video when everything is finished, Yesterday Ibu Asana Viebeke visited us with a crew from Metro TV from Jakarta, they tape us working and also while we were having our lunch and also when Ibu read us the questions you asked us. We also have some questions to ask you. How long did it take you to build the blog? The blog was built by Bapak Wisnaya who is our facilitator. How many people were working on the road from the community? Did any children from Les village help make the road? We raised a lot of money and we really enjoy seeing the progress you have been making with the road. Please send us more pictures on the blog. We will check the blog 3 times a week to see any updated information. Thanks again for your efforts and cooperation.
Miss Brodeur's third grade class.
Dear Les village,
We have a few questions for you. Is it really hot in Indonesia?
YES YES AND YES we are used to the hot day but lately it was just too much, Ibu Asana Viebeke told us that it is because of global warming but we don’t understand what that is about, can you tell us what does that mean?
Do you play sports or games after school?
Yes we run, playing badminton, skipping
What is your school day like?
Fun, we love going to school, we love it even more after Ibu Asana Viebeke came and brought us stationeries, school books, uniform, shoes and socks, school bags. She even treat us and took us to the Zoo and we also visited Ku De Ta and had ice cream we never have had before in our life.
Is the road finished yet, and are you excited to have this road?
Is it fun building the road? How long is the road, and how will you travel on the road?
What transportation will you use?
Are you using machines to build the road, or just shovels?
We use shovel and big hammer.
What is the time difference between Mass. and Indonesia?
We have no idea where you are although Ibu Asana Viebeke had shown us the world map but we have no idea about the outside world. Ibu told us that you are 12 hours behind us, but for us it doesn’t make sense.
How many hours a day, do you work on the road?
How many people are working on the road?
Do you have cars in Indonesia?
Yes we do have cars in Indonesia, but in our hamlet none of us have cars; few of us have motorbyke
We would love to hear the answer to these questions. Please send more pictures, we really enjoyed looking at them. Do you have any questions about us?
What are you going to do with the extra money?
We decided to use the extra money to help our 6th grade children to take extra time to do school lesson extra training so that we can pass the national exam. We would be trained by our teacher in her home down in the village. We have to parted from our parents who live up in the hamlet of Butiyang. Some of us would cry of home sick, but Ibu Asana Viebeke told us not to cry but to care for each other and love each other while we are away from our family. She promised that when we pass our exam, she will give all of us present. We are looking forward to that, but we have to work very hard so that we can pass the national exam.
We will continue to check the blog.
Mrs. Pappas' third grade class
Dear People of Les Village,
We think you did a great job on your road. You've been working really hard since you started in August. We're happy that you made the road, and we're happy the money we collected helped you to do it.
There are a few things we are wondering:
How long did you work on the road? Is it all finished or do you have a little more work to do? How many feet long is the road? How many rocks did you need to use to build the road? We need many cubic meters of rocks, and we have to crush the big rocks with big hammer.
How has the road helped your village?
It make us easier to trade because we can bring our produce and our merchandise to the buyer who are waiting for us down in the village, it usually took us 1 hour more to go down in a very steep and dangerous small soil and sharp rocks. Our children can now running down and up the hill with no problem and we are not worry as we used to be anymore if our children would go up and down the new road that you helped us built. We thank you so much
Sincerely,
Mrs. Rizzuti's First Grade Class
Vinson-Owen School
Hello people of Les Village!
How are you? It looks like the road is almost done! Congratulations! Is there anything left to do on the road? How are your lives different with the new road? When you worked on the road, did you still have time to spend with your families? Yes our family would visit us time to time as we build the road, our children are happy because it is now easier for them to go up and down the road. Do the kids like their school? Is there any leftover money from the road? We have decided to use the leftover money to help the education of our children.
Is it easier to get water now?
Yes, and we are using the left over to buy water tank to put in the school vicinity so that it is easier for the children to wash their hands and faces.
Is your community growing larger now?
We are taught not to have to many children, we just hope our children will be healthy and they can get education and through Ibu Asana Viebeke, you have given us the chance to a better life, We thank you.
We are getting ready to go to VO on Skates. What is Skates?The whole school goes to a skating rink to skate together as a community. Does your school do any all school activites like that? We are going on vacation at the end of the day.
We hope the road turns out really nice.
Yours truly,
Mrs. Crowley's third grade class
p.s. Write back soon!
Here are some insights and questions from my class:
We are very impressed with your progress on the road and with your ability to work together as a community to get this road built! Thank you, we are very happy indeed with the road that you helped us built. We are also very happy that Ibu Asana Viebeke and her team trained us to do the road with the concept of community based participatory process. It has given us the real value of working together through learning by doing methods. We learned a lot about material efficiency and use our time effectively. The process and her love also taught appreciate and respect each other among our community and put our efforts in more positive energy, seriously caring for our children education. We want our children to know more of the world, getting more chances to get a higher education, as we have never had the chance to do that in our life. All we know is working on the farm and make ends meet. We love it very much when Ibu brought us and our children some lunch of mixed rice as we rarely consume rice as we cannot afford buying rice. She also brought vitamin B complex and milk for our children. Our children are now looking better and healthy and they love going to school. She brought the local government to look into our hamlet and make commitment to build the school, but we know that it will still take a long time before our school will be added more classroom because there are still a lot of school that need to be built. Ibu said that she will do her best to find donors who would help us built our classrooms.
Looking at the road reminds us of some of the roads we have here in Massachusetts and how some roads are similar to yours, but most of our roads here are very different. We have some questions and can't wait to learn more about the road. We were wondering:
When you finish with the road, will you plan to build another road?
Yes, but just around our hamlet.
How long did you work on the road each day and was it really hot while you were working?
Yes, very very hot
Do you work on the road all day? Do the kids help and when would they help?
How did you learn how to build a road? Do you get paid for your work?
No, we get Food for work and we would use that to feed all our member of the family. We are happy that you would give us the material to do the work. We need the road so much and thank you.
We just studied simple machines.
Do you use machines to build the road? Which ones?
We don’t use machines, we just use our body strength, shovel and big hammer
How many bags of cement did you use?
271 and we need another 50
How is the road helping the school and village?
How did you feel before/during/ and after the road was completed?
Before we had to walk very slowly and carefully as the road was steep and dangerous cause it was narrow and layed with scattered sharp stones, we also worry for our children. Now it is much easier for us to pass through the road.
Thanks for putting our ideas on the blog. My kids thought it looked like a bike path,
See you soon, Yes it is actually a path but big enough for a small vehicle to climb up in emergency. It is impossible to build strong steady road with our capacity. We need a serious plan and heavy machineries to do a steady and strong road for heavy vehicle. This path is more than enough for us for now and we thank you for that.
Mrs. sheenahan
5th grade
Dear Les Village,
-Are they finished with the road now?
-Do they have roads like we so here?
Yes we do have roads like you but maybe not quite like yours, but those road are the main roads built by the government. That kind of road would be the responsibility of the provincial government. The smaller road is the responsibility of the regional government and the smaller smaller road would be the village road and our road would be the hamlet road. The local government has promised us and Ibu Asana Viebeke that they will help us maintain our small road we just built with your help. We would like to build a bridge that connect us with our family across our hamlet and we would like to ask Ibu Asana Viebeke if she would help us to get some fund for the material and we will do the road as self help, the same methods as we built the road now with your help.
-Do they have scooters or cars?
Yes we have scooters, it is actually the most effective vehicle to go around with. Our scooters should have a good power to go up and down the road we built because of the steep and dangerous parts of the road.
-How did they build the road and how did they know what steps were needed to build a good road?
Ibu Asana Viebeke helped us with the steps and she also brought some friends of hers and Pak Wisnaya is an engineer, and together with Ibu Asana Viebeke they trained us the technique to build the road. We have also our local knowledge that we combine with the modern techniques.
-How many people helped? How many hours a day did they work?
-Is it what they expected it to be?
Yes, we built the road just as we expected
-Why is it bumpy?
Because it is steep and it needs a gripper so that it is not slippery
-How many people live in the village?
Around 500 people
-What are the children learning in school mathematics, reading, counting, biology, drawing,
-The class also offer congratulations on a job well done and wishes them luck in anything that may need to be completed.
Miss Ulman
.JPG)
.JPG)
