Markit

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Sep 3, 2007
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Good question, not because it's difficult or complicated but because nobody knows what the state of play is now days. A year ago or 2 I would have easily said "no problem" but people have run into difficulties volunteering for charities and NGOs for no pay as the gov have taken the standpoint that they are taking away a paying position for an Indonesian - which your "teaching" could also be construed to do.

Unless someone else knows more, my advise would be to just get here and play it by ear. I was invited to come and sit in on a number of private school classes for the kids to bounce their (abysmal) English off but gave it up as it was just dreadful the level of "teaching" in Indo schools and I didn't have the heart to tell off the teachers every day for their shocking English.

Have to say that I then took up chasing brown women and drinking ale and have never looked back.
 

davita

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Mar 13, 2012
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I agree with Markit that 'volunteering' is a very grey area.

If you get here and living in the sticks, as you describe your future, I'd suggest getting to know the banjar first and offer yourself...if they agree, you are home and free, as they control village life.
Just don't go and upset anyone outside the village because 'using immigration' is how Indonesia retaliates to foreigners they don't like.

For example... here is current news of a Fullbright scholar who attended the tear-down of those riverside huts this week...Jakarta Post...

"The South Jakarta Immigration Office arrested Fulbright researcher Frank Sedlar during the eviction in Bukit Duri, Tebet, South Jakarta on Wednesday for an alleged visa violation.
Sedlar, a civil engineer from the University of Michigan, the US, reportedly aroused officials’ suspicion as he had come to the eviction site with advanced photography equipment, such as tripods and a high-tech camera, like a professional journalist.....
"
His accompanying friend, on a VOA, was being deported.

It's clear they don't like interfering foreign activists.
 

DenpasarHouse

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Aug 13, 2013
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Something else to consider is if by giving a service for free are you taking away income, or potential income, to a local teacher/tutor. Teaching on the side is very common for teachers in Bali, it's more likely you would pair up with a local teacher and just help out in their already established lessons. I be very surprised if anyone from immigration would have a problem with this. You're not really teaching, you're just a guest.
 

Markit

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Sep 3, 2007
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Something else to consider is if by giving a service for free are you taking away income, or potential income, to a local teacher/tutor. Teaching on the side is very common for teachers in Bali, it's more likely you would pair up with a local teacher and just help out in their already established lessons. I be very surprised if anyone from immigration would have a problem with this. You're not really teaching, you're just a guest.

This is exactly what I did. There are chains of improvement schools around that charge to bring the students up to some level of proficiency (I seem to recall one called Primagama?) If you offer yourself there they will take your arm off - I would warn that, like in the west, you must be very careful how you act and with what children you are ever alone with - for obvious reasons.
 

DenpasarHouse

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Aug 13, 2013
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Sounds like a good tack to take DPS House. I'll certainly keep that in mind.

I've done a fair bit of this and I enjoyed it, but the novelty does wear off after a few sessions in a class room with no AC, high humidity, and the obligation to wear long trousers, shoes and socks (teachers mustn't wear shorts or sandals apparently).
 

geedee

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Feb 1, 2014
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I've done a fair bit of this and I enjoyed it, but the novelty does wear off after a few sessions in a class room with no AC, high humidity, and the obligation to wear long trousers, shoes and socks (teachers mustn't wear shorts or sandals apparently).

Can't believe Markit would wear trousers
 

spicyayam

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Jan 12, 2009
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I do remember a guy posting how he got deported for doing just this. It seems a shame, but that is the way life is here. And there pretty much are no corners in Bali where the government isn't watching us foreigners. You just need to look at this tax amnesty and the government really is knocking on people's doors and not just in the urban areas where you would think they would be concentrating on.
 

Markit

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Sep 3, 2007
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I lived in Bali back in 2002, and know how they operate. I intended donating a few computers, old ones of mine that I'd had wiped clean, but still functional, and a LOT better than none in the school, to the village school as my way of becoming part of the community, but then the demands started, and would have become progressively more expensive to fulfill. As a consequence, they got nothing, not even the computers, no jobs in the project I was going to undertake, no ongoing jobs, gardeners, housekeepers, etc. There is such a thing as being a little too greedy.

This sounds like the usual horror story from down south and the prime reason I've always had to fecking avoid it like the plague. This **** does not happen here.

Can't believe Markit would wear trousers

No, they were happy to have me as I was - they may have hinted it might be better with some long trouss but I can be an ingnorant fecker when I want to be (hard to believe, right?) so I just turned up like I wanted to and they accepted it for the time I did it - which wasn't long. I got really bored with the idiotic teachers - they mean well but they really should have paid attention when they went to college.