Camp IGLOW Karawang

Hello there! We are four American Peace Corps Volunteers serving as English teachers in Karawang, Indonesia. Our names are Zoe Novic, Dylan Blake, Jamie Bohunicky, and Fiona Sheehan. Along with several of our Indonesian counterparts, we are putting together a youth development camp called IGLOW, which stands for Indonesian Generations Leading Our World. The camp will consist of group activities and workshops that teach about health, leadership skills, anti-bullying, environmental protection, animal rights, goal setting and other subjects. While we are here as English teachers, the camp will be facilitated in Bahasa Indonesia to insure that our students take away as much information as possible.

Nothing like this has ever been done in our community. Access to information regarding health and other subjects is often limited for our students, but there is no lack of desire to learn! We as volunteer English teachers have noticed that students often show marked improvements in their participation and enthusiasm for school after a simple one-on-one conversation with them. We work with junior high and high school students; at such a volatile age it is imperative that our students be shown that there are people in the world who are invested in their success.

We want this camp to be sustainable, and that means that we are working to develop partnerships with local businesses so that the camp can be repeated for years to come. Our goal for this first camp is to get at least half of our funding from local Indonesian businesses, but given that it is a new project and we have a lot of groundwork to lay, we need some help from our friends and families in the United States and around the world.

We have been in contact with many organizations that will facilitate workshops at our camp, including Gaia (environmental protection), Samsara (health), Laki-Laki Baru (anti-bullying), and Animal Friends Jogja (animal rights/protection). Some of these presenters will work free of charge, but others charge a modest fee.

64 students (32 boys and 32 girls) gathered from MTsN Rengasdengklok, SMK 1 Rengasdengklok, MAN 1 Karawang, and SMAN 1 Cilamaya will attend the camp, which will take place at Wisata Alam Paradise. (http://wisataalamparadise.blogspot.co.id) The camp will run from April 8th until April 10th.

There are many costs to consider including: renting the space, paying workshop facilitators, training mentors from a local university, books and supplies for the students, food, and transportation to name a few. All funds raised will be spent on the aforementioned costs, and no money whatsoever will go directly to us volunteers. The money raised via gofundme will go to an account controlled by one of our family members who will wire the money to one of our Indonesian partners, but we all have monitoring access to the account, insuring transparency. We will take many photos and videos of our camp and preparation so that you as a donor will get to see where your money went. Thank you for your time, consideration, and support!