
Education
Overview
Indonesia, over the past few years, has made significant progress in its education system, including large improvements in enrolment numbers and gender parity. Begawan has, since its incorporation in 2001, made education for the children of Indonesia a major focus in its daily activities, and has worked within the community to combine living and learning, stimulate the joy of discovery, and release human creative powers, thus optimally encouraging and promoting the best in young people.


Begawan Learning Centre
Begawan Learning Centre provides free, meaningful after-school learning opportunities for the local community, incorporating international and national curricula with an Indonesian and Bali-centric focus. We offer experiential learning and exemplary tutors to develop life skills, environmental responsiveness, an entrepreneurial mindset, and a love of learning for the students to benefit themselves and their communities by breaking the cycle of poverty in rural villages. The national and international curricula are applied, but whenever appropriate, with reference to real-life issues through environmental, social, and culturally meaningful activities. Learning experiences at Begawan support the students to take creative and responsible roles in the world to meet the complex demands of today and tomorrow. Begawan Learning Centre currently divides students into three groups called Flower Buds, Eco Warriors, and Teenagers. The Flower Buds are first grade primary school students aged between 6-7 years old. The Eco Warriors are second grade until fifth grade primary students aged around 7-13 years old. The Teenagers are students who are in sixth grade of primary school up to ninth grade in junior high school.

The Experience
Visit Begawan Learning Centre
Immerse yourself in ‘Learning by Doing’ experiential education at Begawan!
We aim to create innovative and creative changes to inspire local children by giving them opportunities to improve their lives through our Education Program. It is our goal at Begawan to prepare them for creative and responsible roles today and in the future. Depending on their learning schedule and learning, you can actively engage, teach, and participate in a number of different activities with the students during their time at the centre. They may be harvesting mushrooms, preparing planting beds in the garden, feeding the crickets, checking the beehives, or simply learning English and Maths through exciting activities.
The students will be happy to welcome you to our Learning Centre, while our education facilitators will assist you in actively engaging with the students. By visiting our Learning Centre, you contribute to Begawan’s continued free quality education for the local community. You may visit us from Monday to Saturday by appointment.
1. Thematic Lessons
Thematic lessons provide students with opportunities to deepen and expand their knowledge on specific themes such as Animal Tales, Growing in Bali, Cooking Sciences, Dwellings, Commercial Maths, Bees & Butterflies, Teeth, Soil and Farming, Natural Symmetry, and Length & Time. In each theme, Begawan’s students incorporate their own knowledge and research, focussing on introspective, active, emotive, and cognitive skills to create a wide and varied approach to learning.
Practical lessons focus on instilling entrepreneurial mindsets and skills that connect students to alternative employment opportunities. These lessons satisfy the students’ desire for relevant educational experiences for the real world. The classes for this lesson consist of Cricket Raising, Mushroom Farming, Coding, Mentor-Mentee, Inspiration Class, and Balinese Literature.
3. Proficiency Lessons
Proficiency lessons emphasise the development of students’ intellectual abilities to complement their formal education. Consisting of Literacy & Numeracy, English, and Computer Classes (basic computer), these learning activities will be connected to actual life experiences.
4. Extracurricular Lessons
Extracurricular Lessons are organised to give Begawan’s students opportunities to explore and develop different areas of interests. They include cooking, gardening (permaculture), Balinese dance, swimming, and Karate. In addition to those lessons, Begawan holds Sports Days and Holiday Programs twice a year.
1. Puskesmas Payangan facilitates regular health and growth checks.
2. Kita Sayang Remaja (KISARA) assists with sexual and reproductive health and rights workshops.
3. Gigi Sehat Bali provides dental care workshops and check-ups.
4. Palang Merah Indonesia (Indonesia Red Cross Society), Gianyar branch, supports first aid and disaster preparedness training.
5. Relawan TIK provides facilitators and modules for coding and basic computer classes.
In addition, Begawan has a lunch program that provides each student with a free nutritious meal while they are learning at Begawan Learning Centre from Monday to Saturday.









2016

2017
The Bali Starling Eco Warriors, children from schools in Melinggih Kelod, enjoyed after-school activities at the newly opened Klub Lingkungan (Community Club) adjacent to the office, and were introduced to games involving science, maths, geography, history and English. We introduced a program where English lessons were offered to students in exchange for plastic waste, bringing their attention to the waste problem in Bali. Waste was sorted, recycled and sold.

The foundation staff increased their reach to students in SMPN 1 Payangan, where they completed 2 separate 10-week programs, one on waste management and one on endangered wildlife. Students involved in the waste management course went to the Temesi Waste Management facility in Gianyar for an educational talk and tour of the facility. Wildlife students visited three local bird shops selling various birds and the newly opened Begawan Foundation Breeding and Release Centre in Begawan, and became aware of how different these were.
In November 2018, the spacious new Learning Centre was opened on a plot of land behind the foundation’s office – Klub LIngkungan was too small for the number of interested students. The larger space allowed the students to participate in a new activities such as cooking in the centre’s kitchen, karate and Balinese dance. A library was set up, giving students the opportunity to read and research.


Later on, with the rapid transmission of Covid-19, schools and our Learning Centre were closed. Many students participated in at-home lessons – numeracy, literacy, video production, poem, and story writing, puzzles, gardening, diary-keeping, art – were just a few of the activities selected by the foundation staff to provide interesting, active, thought-provoking education to the students unable to attend school or the Learning Centre.
In December, Begawan re-commenced sessions for Eco-Warriors who were still in elementary school, keeping all health protocols in place.

The third theme was Cooking Science, which introduced ingredients, maths – measuring, weighing, calculating ingredients, science – physical changes when cooking, and recipes for both national and international menus. The Eco Warriors organised a Food Festival as their final project on this theme and manned four stands serving a variety of foods: traditional Balinese food, Indonesian food, Asian food, and International food for invited guests.
Dwellings was the next theme, one which allowed students to discover their own traditional buildings, the family compound, the palaces – puri, and the temples – pura. Once again, guests were invited to observe the results of their knowledge and were treated to a display of a number of small-scale models of dwellings. Commercial Maths was the fifth theme, ending in 2021 and continuing into 2022. This was a practical, sociological, and mathematical exploration of money and its history.
In July, coding lessons, computers, and tablets are introduced to enable a deeper understanding of the technology of the modern world to our students.

Learning from the previous year, four education programs; thematic lessons, proficiency lessons, practical lessons, and extracurricular lessons commenced with a better arrangement. The Eco Warriors commenced their sixth theme entitled “Bees and Butterflies”, focused on exploring the life cycle of bees, their roles as pollinators, and their habitats. The highlights of this theme were making candles from beeswax, building beehives, visiting the Bali Butterfly Park to learn about the life cycle of butterflies, and visiting a bee farm to talk with an apiarist, see the bees’ habitat, and harvest honey. As the Bees and Butterflies theme ended, the Eco Warriors organised a festival to raise awareness of the conservation of bees and butterflies.
To organise more learning experiences, we collaborated with Relawan TIK to develop modules and provide facilitators for the coding and basic computer classes (proficiency lessons). A Balinese literature class was introduced to the students.
The next thematic lesson is built around the study of teeth in humans and animals. It is cross-curricular in Health & Hygiene, Maths, Science (Biology), Culture and Social Studies. Science demonstrations, visiting dental practices & dentists, learning about socio-culture practices revolves around teeth such as a blackened tooth, gold tooth, ‘nginang’ – a tradition of eating betel, and the tooth-filing ceremony or ‘Mepandes / Metatah’ will be interesting highlights for our students.
Through Practical Entrepreneurship (EP) lessons, Begawan is committed to instilling entrepreneurial mindsets and skills in students at an early age. One of the projects is cricket raising. It was started with a group of students visiting a cricket farm in Blega, Gianyar. After the visit, the students were equipped with a breeding box to breed and raise crickets directly at the Learning Centre.
Similar to the cricket raising project as part of EP, Six Eco Warriors have established “Pondok Jamur Begawan” which focuses on farming and selling white Oyster mushrooms. Currently, the students take care of 150 bag logs in a Kumbung (mushroom farming house) at our Learning Centre. Regularly, they check the temperature and humidity, observe the growth of mycelium in the bag logs, keep pests away from the bag logs and work collaboratively to market the produce.

Location
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