On November 15th and 16th, 2012, Taman Bacaan Pelangi [Rainbow Reading Gardens] held a two-day workshop for our volunteers who manage our libraries in Flores. The workshop was presented by Ms. Murti Bunanta, a famous children’s books writer in Indonesia and also the founder of Kelompok Pencinta Bacaan Anak (KPBA) or in English its known as the Society for the Advancement of Children’s Literature, and Ms. Dina Tuasuun, her assistant.

Workshop for volunteers of Rainbow Reading Gardens in Flores

The two-day workshop was held at La Veria Restaurant in Labuan Bajo and attended by 30 participants from 15 locations of Taman Bacaan Pelangi in Flores! Wow! It was awesome! Volunteers came from 15 villages, even the ones which were far faaaar awaaayyy! We’re all happy to be in one place and learned new things together.

The objective of this workshop was to teach our volunteers on how to do story-telling nicely, create interesting programs that will attract kids to read & come to the library, as well as managing books in the library.

Ms Murti Bunanta teaching Rainbow Reading Gardens’ volunteers in Flores

Ms. Murti Bunanta even taught the volunteers on how to hold the book correctly when doing story-telling! Not many of us knew about that! Not only that, volunteers also learnt about origami and use origami in the story-telling. It was so much fun! Ms. Dina encouraged the participants to try telling the stories that they just learned and shared them in front of everyone. Hands clapping and laughters colored those two-days of fun.

There was also a discussion session where the volunteers gave new ideas and asked questions. Some of them asked us to provide books about agriculture, so that the parents also benefiting from the library. If they think the books are useful, then they would more likely go to the library and bring their kids, too! That’s a good input and we will try to realize the idea in the near future :).

At the end of the second day, Nila Tanzil, our founder, distributed new collection of books to each library! Hurraaayyy!!! Most of each library received two boxes of books – 1 box was full with Indonesian books and the other box was English books from the Asia Foundation & Pearson Publishing.

Volunteers left the La Veria restaurant with a big smile and new spirit! They gave positive feedback and thought this workshop was very useful for them and would be useful for the kids in their villages, too! Now they knew some new tricks on story-telling and got knowledge on how to create programs for Taman Bacaan Pelangi in their own village!

Thank you, Ms Murti Bunanta & Dina from KPBA (Kelompok Pencinta Bacaan Anak) for the valuable knowledge that you shared to us!! Hopefully you had fun as much as we did in these two days!