Volunteering in Indonesia
Jakarta, Indonesia · August 2024 · NTHU Indonesia Volunteer Team · Team captain
I joined the Indonesia volunteer team out of curiosity. What followed took me into classrooms and temple courtyards, teaching introductory AI and listening to people whose lives and histories I was only beginning to understand.
As captain, I coordinated the team’s planning and activities, worked with our supervisor and university, taught introductory machine learning, and took part in fieldwork in Glodok.
Learning through teaching
The team ran Chinese-language activities for primary pupils and AI classes for secondary students.
Making complex AI concepts understandable was a challenge. I focused on letting students try things themselves and experience how a model worked, rather than beginning with the mathematics behind it. Watching their excitement and concentration made me think about education as a way to encourage curiosity, with both teacher and student learning through the exchange.
Listening in Glodok
In Glodok, we visited temples, spoke with residents and volunteers, and recorded the histories they shared with us. At the Guandi temple, volunteers patiently explained its history and thanked us for helping make these stories accessible in English. I began to understand how language could connect people to a history they might otherwise never encounter.
The name I need to remember
On our first day of fieldwork, we met a 78-year-old man, 李永興. He spent three hours helping us find temples and translating along the way. All he asked in return was that we remember his name.
To continue