Indonesia Bercerita: Children’s Stories Podcast Service

DailySocial had featured several social activity web/internet services, among others are C3friends, a social network aimed for people who suffer from cancer, and another social activity related service Indonesia Bercerita.

I’ve heard of this website and service since a while back, and when one of my friends, a researcher from Netherlands asked me if there’s any local website that provide children story telling service or some kind, it came to mind.

Then I remember that Indonesiabercerita.org provides podcast (mp3) of various children stories. On their website we can listen to children stories podcast directly or download various kind of stories available, all for free.

I tried to contact one of Indonesia Bercerita’s founders, @bukik aka Budi Setiawan. He explained that Indonesia Bercerita emerged from conversations in a social media called Twitter. An idea came up from one of Budi’s friends to create a studio for story telling in form of MP3. Long story short, they come up with a mission to educate through stories.

Budi explained that they chose audio as media for several reasons, among others is to assist parents and teachers in telling story. Other than that audio media is still not really well used in internet world in Indonesia despite a more affordable cost of production than video. Furthermore, this format will help to grow children’s imagination and they will certainly like it, showed by several comments submitted on Indonesia Bercerita’s website.

Indonesia Bercerita runs several activities among others are providing training for Pejuang Pencerita (storyteller), Festival Para Pencerita (storyteller festival), and Festival Menciptakan Cerita (story creating festival). They also welcome anyone who’d like to join Indonesia Bercerita’s activities. Other than listening to their podcast, you can also reduplicate and distribute the podcast (mp3) for various purposes, not for selling them, and contribute in writing stories.

They also dream of communities that conduct educational activities through stories in various forms all over the cities and villages in Indonesia, this community develops by using user generated content method.

I myself have a niece aged below 5 years old. At school she was introduced to computer, i myself usually goes online using cell phone at my home, so it is safe to say that he’s familiar with internet, let alone cell phone. There’s a little doubt when I wanted to provide her hers own computer facility at home, can I provide access to useful contents for her?

Children’s television consumption rate is starting to get alarming, when they actually never say no to storytelling or story reading. Indonesia Bercerita can be an alternative, audio form story telling adopting the way of storytelling with images can encourage children to use their imagination and grow their creative process.

The parents can also accompany their children in listening to the stories if they access it through website, providing explanation and answers from their children to help them understand the stories better, and parents can learn how to tell a story, or, like mentioned in commenting column on Indonesia Bercerita’s website, by downloading podcast and play it on portable device then telling story by using supporting tools such as dolls or puppets can help to develop interaction process between children and parents (as storyteller).

The podcast quality itself is quite good and their site appearance looks fun too. Indonesia Bercerita at the moment is managed by @bukik founder and CTO, @rudicahyo: CCO, @Imammtq: PR, @zulsdesign: web designer, @maya_myworld: COO.

They are still organizing communities, fundraising came from founders and donation, and they are also planning on building partnership with other parties. Most of their activities are still conducted in social media, but there will be offline activities coming soon. From their Twitter account, Indonesia Bercerita is also planning on producing and distributing CD of their available stories.

Their present activities other than keep socializing their program, they also have Cerita Anak ’22 Hari’ (22 Days of Children’s Stories) and children’s stories writing activity and making podcast for FAYA children’s stories. If you are interested to know more of Indonesia Bercerita, you can follow their Twitter account or visit their website and Facebook account.

Translated by Nita Sellya.