“Caring For One Another” Activities of Junior High School Students at the Orphanage

November 4, 2022

From August 25 to 27, 2022, students representing five junior high schools in the province of Our Lady of Good Counsel, Indonesia, held activities at our orphanage. The five schools were Junior High School Notre Dame Jakarta, Junior High School Pius, Pekalongan, Junior High School Borromeus, Purbalingga, and Junior High School Aloysius, Yogyakarta. Each school sent six students from the Student Organization accompanied by two supervising teachers.

The theme of this activity was “Caring for One Another.” Mr. Budi was the coordinator of this activity accompanied by Sister Maria Yuliana. Mr. Budi is the head of the Campus Ministry of Notre Dame Foundation Jakarta. This activity was carried out in collaboration with the sisters at the orphanage, two foundations, Notre Dame Foundation Jakarta and Santa Maria Foundation Pekalongan. This activity aims to awaken the students’ care for others by experiencing life at the orphanage.

In the dynamics of the orphanage, the junior high school students who came from various cities participated in the daily activities of the orphanage by doing household chores such as cleaning the floor and the yard, cooking, peeling onions, harvesting chilies, and mustard greens, making cakes, planting spinach. In addition to physical activities, they also participated in the children’s prayer activity, Lectio Divina.

The students were also given an insight into the history of the Sisters of Notre Dame by Sister Maria Yanitha. The students were happy and grateful to have had this valuable opportunity to learn many things from the children of the orphanage and to be involved in the daily activities of the children. During the evening recreation, the students watched a performance by the children of the orphanage who presented songs and dances. All were impressed to see the creativity of these young performers.

Sister Regina Maria, the director of the orphanage, expressed her gratitude to the students who came to care for the children in the orphanage. Sister said, “Our children here are happy to follow all the processes to live an organized life, have discipline on time, and take responsibility for personal duties. They learn to live self-reliably by doing small works well because by persevering in doing small jobs, we can be trusted with greater responsibilities in the future”.