BCU NEWSFLASH!

Kalimantan BCU school has started building two new classrooms

Building site for BCU's new classrooms.

Two days ago was a very festive occasion for the Bina Cita Utama School when a small selamatan was held and construction of two new classrooms began.

The existing classrooms around the latihan hall can only hold a maximum 12 pupils with limited space and the school had reached full capacity with 55 students. The new classrooms will enable the school to accept new students for the new academic year starting in July 2009. It will be great for the students to have more space and also for the school to have classrooms which can hold up to 15 students.

The school had grown from 36 pupils in mid-2008 to 55 now; and four new classrooms are needed to help us grow to 96 pupils, which is the financial break-even point. A kitchen is also needed to make the 90 daily lunches for the pupils and staff for the new school year, 2009–2010.

BCU applied to Muhammad Subuh Foundation for funding for the 4 classrooms and kitchen for a total of US $48,000 for this project.
MSF was able to provide $20,000. We are grateful to MSF and the Subud members who donate their money to it. Support for the construction was also received from Hamid and Isti da Silva and from the German Subud members through SD Germany. This enabled us to proceed with 2 classrooms and the kitchen, which is wonderful progress.

We are also most grateful to Raquel Alcobia who donated her time to do much of the architectural design and to Daniela and Bachrun Bustillo who completed the design and donated their time to organise and supervise the building program. On Wednesday we had a selamatan early in the morning with prayers to ask for blessings for the construction work. The start has been smooth and by Friday all the work on the foundations was finished. It is planned that the building will be completed on 15 July, ready for the start of the new school year. Meanwhile, we are still looking to raise a final $20,000 to build the other two much-needed classrooms and toilet block. With this basis we can grow the school towards sustainability.

In the coming months we hope to welcome two new Subud members as volunteer teachers. Immanuel Bryson Haines from the UK as teacher/website designer and our first French volunteer teacher, Emilie Pez from Toulouse.

Again, many thanks to our generous supporters.

On behalf of the BCU team,
Michael van der Matten and Rashidah MacDonald

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