Charity During Fasting Month

One of my contractors invited me over to his house for an "open fast" event (Acara Buka Bersama), similar to the one that I had in my company a few weeks ago. This guy lives in a big house that is in a housing area connected to the main road via a muddy dirt path.

Muslims believe that in the month of Ramadan (fasting month), they have to do as much charity as possible and forgive others for their mistakes. Therefore, my contractor invited kids from 3 orphanages to his Acara Buka Bersama.

Upon reaching 6:10pm (time to break fast), all the 40 over orphans rush towards the food. At least some charity work has been put in by the rich of Palembang and make the day for the less fortunate.

Helping The Less Fortunate

Since moving to Indonesia, we have been trying to find ways to contribute to help the people who are less fortunate here.

At first we thought of making monetary donations (which we already do via the church) but we do not feel very confident about the receiving parties making good use of the money. Morever the level of corruption in the country is making us think twice about handing in cash to people that we do not know.

Here are a few ways that we tried to help:

1. Donation of rice to the orphanage - we visited an orphanage one day and decided to purchase five 50kg bags of white rice for the orphans.
2. Credit for motorcycle repairs - our ex-driver Yudi used to know how to repair bikes and we lent him US$250 for him to purchase a second hand bike to fix up then sell it to earn money. After almost half a year has gone by, we doubt that he has earned any extra money to pay us back but it is OK. We just assumed that the money has been used to help Yudi.
3. Time off for schooling - Our maid is only 17 years old and she was forced to stop schooling due to the need to find work. Therefore we gave her time off to let her attend 2 hours of class in school 3x/week.
4. Credit & time off for schooling - Our current driver Iwan was forced out of school to find work when he was 15. We also gave him time off to attend classes 2 hrs for 3x/week. We also paid for his school fees of US$250 for a 6 months crash course to get his high school diploma.

Hopefully all the aforementioned deeds could help the people who are in need, especially those whom we deal with on a daily basis.