The Children of Future for Umamanu Village

Participant of ViMi (Village & Me)

There is a familiar song to our ears, Desaku (my village). This song brings the audience to imagine a life in a peaceful village where there is family togetherness and always become a nostalgia. Based on the song, village should be a good place, well-developed and comfortable to live. But in reality, villages are still facing various limitations, such as road access, technology and information. This has an impact on the imbalance of village development and the unevenness of people’s welfare. Whereas village is very important for the existence of a country because the village’s welfare influences the stability of the country.

Talking about village, it is the lowest administrative unit of government with the autonomy according to its local origin. Based on data from Central Bureau of Statistics in 2016, the number of villages is 82.030 villages. It is a large amount of villages, so they should get more attention in order to develop themselves and able to support the availability of urban needs. Ideally village and city are partners, but many cities grow faster because they are supported by facilities, such as education, economics, technology and information. As a result many residents tend to move to city and villages are getting more left behind.

Such situation also occurs in Sumba, young people tends to leave their village to find better life by being a worker outside the island and even abroad. Lack of sense of belonging, willingness to build village and the ability to see the potencies of the village contribute the rush of people to abandon their villages. Stube-HEMAT Sumba responded to this situation by designing 'Village and Me program' (I and my village). A program that gives students opportunity to do something for their village during the holiday.

One of the participants of the program is Onira Tenggu Nalu, who studies Theology in STT GKS Lewa. She has joined several trainings of Stube-HEMAT Sumba, such as livestock, alternative energy and education. Her interest to apply as participant of ViMi program is her passion to share what she has learned in campus. She wants to share with her village community about spiritual topics, related with her studies, practice of ministry in church as her ministry in the future. Onira's activity in July took place in her village of Umamanu, sub district of Lewa Tidas and it was concentrated in Kotak Maringu, a branch of GKS Umamanu. Her activities included Sunday school bible study, outdoor worship, drama and dancing, reading and distributing books for children.

Related with the mentoring and faith empowerment for Sunday school children and church youth, she motivated herself to be able in mobilizing them to grow spiritually and actively involved in local church activities. The distribution of books for children in her village was expected to foster their interest to read and learn new knowledge.

Onira joyfully did her ViMi activity with children in her village. She was so grateful to find their enthusiasm, for example, arriving early before the activity started. In addition, the local residents hoped that she will continue such activities, so the children learn new lessons and join positive activities.

From this activity Onira found impression on her heart and learned many things, such as children with various characters, they dare to express opinion, they learned honesty and the meaning of patience. She hoped, everyone should do this program not because of facilitation from Stube-HEMAT Sumba, but she encouraged young people of Sumba to re-observe what village needs, willingnes to build and serve by themselves. (Meliani Retang).