Personal interview with Levi from Sasak Satu Swara. Don’t miss it!

Thank you very much for keep supporting Sasak Satu Swara, from Indonesia!

 

As a return to your valuable support, we would like to share with you this month’s Newsletter from the organization that we hope you’d enjoy!

 

 

This month, Anisia from Airfunding had an interview with Levi, the founder of Sasak Satu Swara, and we’ve had the chance to know a little more about him, his motivations, dreams and experiences in the foundation. Please keep reading!

 

Interview with Levi, the founder of Sasak Satu Swara

 

 

  • Hi Levi! Thank you for participating in this interview! I would like to ask you some questions, so your supporters get a chance to know you and your work better. To start, can you please tell us a little about you and your background?

 

Hi! My name is Levi and I am working as a tour leader. I lead trips to almost all of the tourist destinations here in Indonesia. I was very lucky to get a scholarship and study Law at university while I worked on the tourism industry.

 

  • Can you describe the activities of the organization and tell us about the volunteers and the staff?

 

We are teaching the children everyday except Sundays. We normally teach English, Geography, Culture and Religion, but besides that we also teach them about moral and how to manage our environment.

 

We work with university graduates, and also the tour guide as our volunteers. However I am still struggling on finding volunteers as we need to pay them at least for their transportation and meals. Fortunately, the society trust us a lot and I believe that this is our huge capital to build a free big school in the future.

 

 

  • Why did you decide to create Sasak Satu Swara?

 

I decided to establish the NGO because not much people care about the education of the children in the area.

 

I’ve traveled to many beautiful places in Indonesia and they all have the same problem: the tourism industry is growing but not the education, so most of the workers are from outside Lombok.

 

I started teach the children since I was in high school but I formally established the foundation in February of 2020.

 

  • What are the biggest challenges for education in Indonesia?

 

The biggest challenge of our education in Indonesia are westernization, modernization and globalization.

 

Most of the students are having access to gadgets that makes them very lazy and addicted to online games for those who have mobile phone. Another problem is that Indonesia is erasing all the moral subjects, so our very basic and fundamental cultures seems faded away. That’s why we are teaching cultures and moral in this foundation and we tried to tell government as well about our objectives.

 

 

  • What has been the biggest achievement of the foundation so far?

 

The biggest achievement is that we are the only non-formal school with a good quality of education in Lombok, where all the students don’t need to pay anything for their education.

 

We are very delightful of the social reaction and fully support our project. People can see the change of their children when they study at our school.

 

  • What are the goals for Sasak Satu Swara, short/long term?

 

The main objectives of our NGO is to create a huge and free education for bigger scale and to offer free education for all children and youth (upgrading skills) in the whole are of Lombok. We would like to have a proper building to study like a formal school so that we can accept all students wherever they are from.

How has your experience in Airfunding been so far?

 

I found Airfunding through its website when I was trying to find a fundraising platform to when the earthquake happened in Lombok. I tried to make a project through Airfunding and it worked very well! We had donations from many countries and we could run our project.
We are very happy that Airfunding is always there whenever we need assistance.

 

 

  • Meet Taufan, a boy that almost drops out from school because he needed to fed his father’s cows.

 

Taufan is 10 years old. He needs to work everyday to feed his father’s cows, and it’s extremely hard to get grass, especially in the dry season in Lombok, so he needs to walk for quite long way to get the grass and bring home for his father’s cows.

 

His father is a freelancer construction, where the job and the money is very unpredictable.

 

Taufan was attending school but, as his father always asked him to seek the grass for the cows, he has no time for school.

 

Tufan lives not far from Sasak Satu Swara Base Camp, so I always say hello to him and ask him whether he wants to continue his study or not. Two months ago I talked to his father to give Taufan permission to study in Sasak Satu Swara and his father accepted.

 

Taufan has been studying with us for 1,5 months now, he is very happy playing the others children, although in the beginning he was very shy and unconfident.
We gave Taufan new uniform, books, and pens for free.

 

Thanks very much for all the supporters who have changing our world.

 

Thanks very much for Airfunding.

 

 

 

Some curiosities about Indonesia. Did you know that?

 

1. Jakarta’s Gelora Bung Karno Stadium is one of the largest stadiums in the world. When it was completed in 1962 to host the Asian Games its original capacity was 120,800 people, which would have made it the second-largest today.

2. The Komodo dragon, found in Indonesia, is the largest lizard in the world, growing up to 3 meters (9.8 feet) in length.

3. The world’s largest flower, Rafflesia Arnoldi, weighs up to 7 kg (15 pounds) and only grows on the island of Sumatra, Indonesia. Its petals grow to 0.5 meters (1.6 feet) long and 2.5 cm (1 inch) thick.

4.Indonesia is the largest archipelago in the world with more than 18,000 islands.

5.Indonesia still enforces the death penalty – by firing squad. In 2015 it executed eight drug traffickers, including two Australians, in a case that triggered an international outcry, while Lindsay Sandiford, a British woman, is currently on death row after being found guilty of smuggling cocaine into Bali in 2012. Her case is particularly baffling: she claims she was coerced into carrying the drugs by a criminal gang, and helped police with a sting operation to catch her accomplices. She was then sentenced to death while others involved were only given jail time.

6.More than 700 different dialects and languages are spoken in Indonesia, which makes it a highly diverse country.

7.Do you know that in Indonesia it existed the practice of bride-kidnapping? Before a wedding and to show to the community the desire to marry the bride, men kidnapped women. After that practiced, they started being considered wives.

 

 

Remember that you can directly communicate with Levi in the Supporters Community in Facebook. Don’t forget to join the community if you haven’t done it yet, by clicking on the following link!