Orphans International America - Programs

� Rotary, Kiwanis and Lions Clubs
� Other International Programs
� American Friends Service Committee
� Youth Hostel and Elderhostel Tie-In
� The Institutes� Chautauqua Programs
� Nobel Prize Studies
� Cross-Cultural Studies
� HIV / AIDS Prevention
� Smoke-Free Zone
� Arts & Crafts Tracks / Vocational Studies
� Historic Reconstruction Projects
� Living History Projects
� Refugee Children of the World
� Visiting Kids Program
� Thrift Shops, Salons, Diners, and Caf�s
� Houseparents Programs.
� Animal Shelter and Veterinary Studies Programs
� Micro-Loan Program for Graduates

Rotary, Kiwanis and Lions Clubs. Orphans International hopes to work with international service organizations. The Kiwanis motto is simply �Serving the Children of the World.� Another major service organization,the International Association of Lions, is the largest service club in the world; it too has active international exchange programs. Both Rotary and the Lions are active in Guyana, especially in the cities of Georgetown and Demarara.

Other International Programs. Other programs that we hope to network with include National 4-H Council International Programs, Girls Scouts USA International Programs, the YMCA of America International Programs, and International Youth Hostels and International Elderhostels. We are exploring the possibility of both an International Youth Hostel and Elderhostel on or adjacent to each of our campuses to further promote foreign visits.

American Friends Service Committee. The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker predecessor to the Peace Corps, was founded in 1917 and awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1947. Orphans International will request that volunteers from this group be placed on our campuses as medical professionals, engineers, teachers or administrators. The U.S. Peace Corps, it should be noted, does not operate in either Indonesia or Guyana.

The governments of Japan, and reportedly the Netherlands, offer similar if smaller programs and will be encouraged to participate as well. Likewise, Orphans International will encourage NGO�s similar to the American Friends Service Committee from outside of the U.S., such as from Canada, Australia, Britain, Japan, the Netherlands, Singapore and Taiwan, in assisting the people of North Sulawesi, Haiti and Guyana as well.

Elderhostel Tie-In. Elderhostel is a 25-year old New England-based organization for seniors 55-years old and older. That focuses on continuing education. It now operates in over 2,000 national and international locations, from national parks to foreign universities. In 1999 it offered 263,000 courses which cost somewhere between US$400 to US$8,000. 31,000 requests were rejected in one year recently due to full classes. Orphans International hopes to offer regular courses in conjunction with Elderhostel.

Our Chautauqua Programs. Orphans International will offer an abundance of adult educational programming for visitors, residents and staff. The programs will be modeled after the Chautauqua movement in the U.S., which had its beginnings in a summer training program for Sunday School teachers, started on Lake Chautauqua, New York 125 years ago. It quickly developed into a traveling tent show of lecturers that brought culture to small-town America.   The Rev. Joan Campbell of the National Council of Churches, incidentally, recently resigned to serve as chaplain at Chautauqua.
The author of Chautauqua: An American Utopia describes the institution as �a cultural playground of concerts, ballet, opera, theater and art exhibitions.�   Our Chautauqua programs will include the visual arts, including the plastic arts � painting, sculpture, print-making, photography, film, video, decorative arts � and those aspects of the performing arts such as ballet, theater, opera, orchestra, etc. We will also encompass the sciences � biology and geology � language, history, sociology and anthropology.

Our Chautauqua Programs will likewise incorporate indigenous arts. Through Yayasan Orphans International Indonesia, this incorporation will encompass both the Indonesian stringed instrument known as the gamelan and the shadow puppetry of Bali known as wayang. The music of the gamelan, a stringed instrument likened to the sound of moonlight or falling water, is incorporated into an entire range of Javanese and Balinese performing arts � from dance to drama to puppetry. The interlocking rhythmic and melodic patterns of the gamelan were first introduced to the West in 1893 when Claude Debussy and others witnessed the aristocratic refinement of a Javanese ensemble performance at the Paris International Exhibition.   Wooden drums (kendhang), bamboo flutes (suling) and two-stringed lutes (rehab) complete the orchestra. It should be noted that Balinese gamelans are normally owned and maintained by the village music club (sekaha); our Indonesian project will nurture such a club on campus for the same purpose. We will also support the traditional arts of the Balinese shadow puppetry known as wayang (literally, �shadow�), as well as traditional Balinese dance. Wayang puppetry, using highly decorated flat leather puppets, is based on the Hindu religious epics, the Mahabharata (Great Battle of the Descendants of Bharata) and the Ramayana (The Travels of Rama), which became enduring traditions among Indonesian believers and are known today all over the world. Balinese dance is another dramatic form of expression similar to wayang, in which human performers portray gods, heroes, villains, and other characters in literary epics.

As in Haiti and Guyana, the arts are inseparable from day-to-day culture in Indonesia, especially in Sulawesi, Bali and Java. As a guidebook to Indonesia notes, �Dancers, Shaman, actors, puppeteers, priests, storytellers, poets and musicians are members of the community who perform vital roles in informing, entertaining, counseling and instructing their fellows in the well-worn ways of tradition. To Indonesians at least, a coherent society is utterly unthinkable without them.�

William Mitchell, author of Countries of the World: Guyana, summarizes the Guyanese artistic tradition as follow "Guyanese artistic and intellectual expression is characterized by its separate ethnic contributions, by the growth of a distinct Guyanese tradition in all fields of creative endeavor, and by an attempt by the government to stimulate interest and support for further development. The historical inspiration for most creative effort was an identification with the grandeur of the Guyanese landscape. This is still present in the art and literature of modern Guyana; yet a new sense of pride is developing as a result of independence. The freedom to discover and build a distinct tradition has encouraged artists to reveal more subtle and complex themes of expression, to develop a pride in the folk-traditions and ethnic contributions of previously submerged elements, and to build a society which can sustain a thriving artistic and intellectual community.

Nobel Prize Studies. Orphans International will place special emphasis on studying the thoughts of previous Nobel Prize winners. In addition to the Frances D. Alleman-Luce Libraries collections on Nobel Prize winners, and the memorial markers to many of the recipients over the last century, children of our Institutes will have Internet access to the Nobel Electronic Museum scheduled to open in 2001. The Wallenberg Young Scholars Program of the Nobel Museum is to be featured on-line, offering non-technical information to make the laureates scientific research more accessible to lay readers, and will be of particular interest to the Institutes students and have a special area designated for its exclusive access within the Richard Livingston Luce Computer Center in Indonesia and the Betty Millard Computer Center in Guyana.

Cross-Cultural Studies. Harvard University scholar Stephen Jay Gould writes of �one of the most common fallacies in human reasoning � the elevation to universal status of a local, limited, and potentially false belief held by an individual or culture.�   He offers as an example his own erroneous assumption made on a trip to Africa. There he found that the government taxed bicycles, charging more for a three-wheeled bicycle than a two-wheeled one. �I laughed to myself at the blatant absurdity of charging more for a kid�s toy than an adult�s necessity,� he writes. In reality, the three-wheeled vehicles were more like local taxis, used for hauling passengers or supplies and could thus be reasonably taxed at a higher rate. Gould credits his own �residual and unconscious racism so pervasive in our culture that even white folks of decent will cannot entirely extinguish the blight: those primitive Africans got it backwards again.�

The AFS Intercultural Exchange Program uses the description of the primitive breakfasts some of its students would be forced to eat as AFS sent them out across the globe. They are told they will be eating on a daily basis the embryo of a feathered animal, fat and flesh taken off the side of pigs, and crushed beans with hot water. With shock, the students finally realize they arre describing their own usual breakfast: bacon, eggs and coffee. During a stay that year with an otherwise wonderful German family, one AFS student was always perplexed why they always closed doors to him; wherever they were in the house, kitchen, living room, bedroom, they would always close the door. Years later he finally learned though a book on cross-cultural relations that German culture, influenced by centuries of weather patterns and architectural styles, had developed a �closed� house model that was the antithesis of the traditional �open� house in which he had grown up in America.

Louise Fiber Luce, Ph.D., and her sister Elise C. Smith, M.A., have edited a college textbook of readings in cross-cultural communication that was received warmly and is used to-day across the country. Toward Internationalism, now in its second revision, discusses American assumptions, culture shock and the problems of adjustment in new cultural environments, and cross-cultural awareness. The textbook deals specifically with �the influence which a society�s value orientations, role expectations, perception, nonverbal patterns, and language behavior bring to bear on the international cross-cultural encounter.� This book may well become required reading for all visitors to the campuses of Orphans International. The chapter �Unifying Themes in Caribbean Culture� in another of thier books, The Spanish-Speaking World: An Anthology of Cross-Cultural Perspectives, is especially recommended for visitors to future Orphans International projects in Haiti or Guyana, in spite of the fact tthat neither country is Spanish speaking.

Arts & Crafts Tracks / Vocational Studies. Orphans International will offer a host of vocational classes through both our academies and through our Chautauqua programs. Classes will include house construction, pottery making and bamboo craft (two of the largest indigenous crafts) and agricultural production (traditional indigenous plants in Indonesia are coffee, spices, rice; in Guyana, sugar cane). A number of local villagers will be invited to participate in these classes free of charge.

Historic Reconstruction Projects. There are many collapsed Dutch farmhouses made of stone scattered throughout the mountains of North Sulawesi, particularly in the Minahasa region, and abundant but rotting colonial wooden structures throughout Haiti and Guyana. Many of these stone edifaces in Sulawesi are over 200 years old. The primary project of our vocational-track, Arts & Crafts students will be learning how to rebuild these historic structures on campus. Students in our construction and engineering classes will not only be able to learn construction techniques with indigenous materials, but will also be trained in contemporary America and European building techniques. All students, faculty, and guests will be able to witness traditional colonial architecture and have a better understanding of the eighteenth century Dutch colonial presence in Indonesia and British colonial presence in Guyana. In Guyana, the Center for Architectural Heritage Research and Documentation of the University of Georgetown, supported by UNESCO, is working to preserve the tremendous architectural heritage of the only English-speaking country in South America, home to what the New York Times has described as �some of the most exuberant Victorian architecture in tropical and sub-tropical climes.�

Living History Projects. One of the most important projects on our campuses will be the Living History Projects. Through this program, akin to the Foxfire Project in rural Tennessee in the 1970s, we will teach our senior academy students to interview the residents of our elderly cottages, capturing for our website photos, tape recordings and written recollections of the history of Indonesia, Haiti and Guyana. Preserving this legacy will not only contribute to a better understanding of our world, but will teach our students valuable study and research skills. The Living History Project will be a requirement thesis for all graduates of our senior academies and will place our educational programmingon the map of international academic excellence.

Thrift Shops, Salons, Diners, and Caf�s. Each resident of our campuses � children, seniors and staff � will receive an allowance, possibly in U.S. currency, redeemable at the thrift shops, salons, diners and caf�s to be built on both campuses. These facilities will be built to allow residents more independence in buying clothes, having their hair cut and eating outside their small homes or elder centers. These facilities will also welcome our overseas visitors, and will be open to local guests as well.

Houseparents Programs. The Houseparents Program will 1) provide foster parents for our orphans and 2) provide room, board and employment opportunities to those who are in danger of being ostracized by their communities � single mothers with children, unmarried men, etc. In rural Indonesia, is a social handicap for a woman not to be married after the age of 20; to be unwed with child is to be cut off from society. Unmarried men face the same scorn and ostracism. In Guyana, unwed men or widowed mothers are also treated less than equally, especially in the East Indian communities. Here, because of the traditional male role in economics and religion, and since the ethnic identify is expressed though religious identify, an absent father is extremely detrimental to the family.

The houseparents will serve as what the Japanese refer to as kyoiku-mamas, meaning houseparents who push their children to achieve academically. The houseparents are expected to work closely with the teachers, through the American-styled �Houseparents-Teachers Association� (H-PTA), that will meet each Sunday afternoon when the children are involved with extra-curricular activities outside of both the homes and schools.

Animal Shelter and Veterinary Studies Programs. Orphans International believes that the needs of people come before the needs of animals; however, if both needs can be met simultaneously, it is for the better. In Indonesia, there is a specific need to have an animal control warden, veterinarian and facility available because there is an abundance of feral cats and dogs that pose a serious health risk to children and adults. Because the state does not provide such services, Yayasan Orphans Internatinal Indonesia will need to incorporate a program in conjunction with its academic science track, so that such needs may be met while lessons are learned. All cats and dogs found on campus, attracted by the number of people and food potential, will be trapped, neutered and inoculated, then made available as pets to our children as well as to local villagers. All pets on our campuses will be required to wear identification, a system unfamiliar in Indonesia and Haiti today. In addition to potential pets, the campus will probably attract other indigenous wildlife, which the animal warden will assist in controlling. North Sulawesi contains beautiful and non-threatening animals such as the crested macaques, tarsiers (small nocturnal arboreal primate with large round eyes, long tails, and long fingers and toes tipped with soft disk-like pads), as well as potentially dangerous snakes, wild boars (babiusa), dwarf buffaloes (anoas), and jungle rats (tikus). Guyana is known for its deer, anteaters, and two specimens of monkeys. Manakins, sugarbirds and cotingas are also found in abundance.

Micro-Loan Program for Graduates. Large international development projects often have little direct impact on the lives of those impoverished in Indonesia, Haiti and Guyana. Micro-loans are the most direct way in which Orphans International will be able to assist its graduates in becoming self-reliant after graduation. As many international development professionals are convinced, availability of credit on reasonable terms is key to solving problems of rural underdevelopment. Orphans International plans to make interest-free small business loans of up to five year�s average salary to its graduates � approximately US$4,000. The successes of this program will not only benefit the graduates, but also Indonesia, Haiti and Guyana, as well as our programs themselves � contributions from successful graduates are expected to be-come the most consistent source of future capital, mirroring the adult orphans from Boys Town in Nebraska.   These loans may be used to either begin a small business or to finance college education. It is expected that both academies will begin to graduate a small number of 18 year-olds by the year 2005. This program�s target date will thus be set for the same year.

It is our hope to be able to hire as many of our graduates as possible, and train them to run our orphanages, moving staff back and forth between our international campuses. Our Executive Board of Directors has begun this process by approved the hiring of a Haitian Assistant Director to work with the Director of Yayasan Orphans International Indonesia for three months in 2002, and to have our Indonesian director take part in our activities in Haiti and Guyana.