Yoo-hoo we MADE IT! 👍👏🎊
Thank you everyone for bringing a smile on these children’s faces. Your contribution and generosity made and makes a difference.❤️
🌈 Mission: 157 pairs of shoes for primary school kids in a little village in central Kalimantan (Borneo).
📆Start: Thursday, 8/8/2019
Finish: Saturday, 24/8/2019
Here’s the review with the photos 🌈
Love,
Titien
I saw a Facebook post by Pastor Ernest (my friend whom I knew in HongKong), that he donated water bottles and writing books to a primary school in a small village in Kalimantan (Borneo).
Me: Ko (means big brother), why are the kids barefoot 🦶?
Ernest: many of them are too poor to afford shoes
Me: I wanna help to buy them shoes
Me: Are there only 22 kids in this school?
Ernest: that’s the Christian kids.
Me: No, how many kids are there in total?
Ernest: 157 kids
Me: Then, we buy 157 pairs of shoes.
Ernest: You want to organize a charity event? It’ll take forever to realize this project without external help.
Me: No, I will ask my friends to help those kids.
I started sharing the idea to buy shoes for those kids to my groups of friends, and Tobias posted it on Facebook.
I named it, the Rainbow Project 🌈 just to make it easy to point which cause we refer to. It’s a private initiative.
we got the list with names of 157 kids and their shoe sizes. We started looking for shoes distributor (difficult for a shop to provide the amount and the different sizes we want).
I live in Germany. Ernest lives in a village in Java.
None of us have a friend who knows a shoe distributor.
We were calculating options for the most cost effective way to get those shoes to those kids.
I learned that the air freight cost from Java to Kalimantan-Palangkaraya is expensive.
We could send the shoes by ship, but this would take weeks to get there.
(Indonesia consists of 16.000 islands, 2/3 of the area is water, and the water transport infrastructure isn’t developed)
in a story I posted on DIPG Online, I mentioned that it’s occupying my mind to find the best and most cost effective way to execute this project.
Surprisingly, Vanda, a sister of a friend of mine, whom we haven’t talk to for more than 10 years, left a comment that she is living in Kalimantan!
Immediately after I read that comment, I called my friend and asked for her sister’s WhatsApp. I called Vanda and told her my problem, asking her if she knows a shoe distributor in Kalimantan.
Vanda: “Oh, my church’s friend is a shoe distributor in Kalimantan! Here, his contact number. “
We agreed that he would procure the shoes. Shipping them from East Kalimantan to Central Kalimantan is way cheaper than to send them from Java. We saved costs.
I transferred the donations we received to Ernest. He paid for the shoes, and booked flight tickets to Kalimantan to deliver the shoes in person.
the shoe distributor delivered the shoes.
They arrived in Palangkaraya, the capital of Central Kalimantan on the following day, Tuesday, 20/8/2019.
Ernest and his wife, Laura flew to Palangkaraya.
70% of the journey is through rain forest.
60% of the road is unpaved.
On their way, they even saw forest fires.
It’s dark, no street’ light.
they drove to the school.
Here’s the view of that village.
—- This is their friend’s house
They’re loved!
And motivated them to study well and dream big.
The teacher asked every kids to draw thank you note 📝 😅
Total fund: Rp. 26.018.860
Total expenses: Rp. 16.801.900
Leftover: Rp. 9.216.960 (for initial fund of our next charity project)
See you again in the next project ⭐️😉
Such an awesome story!! Love how amazing everything came together to bring smiles to these 157 kids!! From just a post on FB that spark an idea, from an idea to a series of actions and realizing it to fruition!
Thanks for participating in this project Ash, your generosity meant a lot for those kids! Welcome you to join again in the next rainbow project 🙂 💕