WILLIAMSBURG — Two Williamsburg Dojo instructors are headed to Indonesia with English books and funds to help schools for street kids.
Chris Robinson, a guru and owner of the dojo, saw his first practitioner of Indonesian martial arts, Pencak Silat, in 2007 and fell in love with the art.
“It blew me away, and I was like, ‘oh my gosh, it’s so beautiful, it’s deadly, I got to have it.’ So I actually dropped all the stuff I was teaching, told my students, I’m like, ‘all right, we’re going for a ride. I have got to learn this art,'” Robinson explains.
The dojo has about 175 students, which likely makes it the largest school outside of Indonesia for the martial art, according to Robinson.
Robinson said whenever the dojo goes to Indonesia, it always does performances of Silat for them. At the end of one of those performances, the school master quietly asked Robinson if he could do him a favor: if they were coming back next year, could they bring English books?
Robinson was told that the children being able to speak English would get them far ahead in life, and he agreed to start collecting books. His first trip back in 2020, he brought books, but he and his team got stuck when the COVID-19 pandemic began shutting things down. They ended up giving the books to people in Jakarta before leaving the country as the borders closed.
“It’s sort of been a passion of mine,” said Robinson. “I took a bunch of books to three schools last time. I was there a couple of months ago, and the headmasters, the teachers, all those, they’re just really, really happy.”
Robinson said Shell helped sponsor a group of schools in North Jakarta, adding it costs about $150 to run a successful school with 13 to 20 students. He said that $150 a month will clothe and feed the kids two meals a day and pay the teachers.
During his current trip, his goal is to talk to Shell about funding for the schools, as well as helping on the American side of the operation.
“It’s a little bit more than teaching these kids to read English,” he said, noting the threats of civil unrest in Jakarta and trafficking.
The books for this trip were donated by J. Blaine Blayton Elementary School. One of his students, a teacher at the school, told him the library was discontinuing books and said Robinson could have them, so he took a pickup truck and got about 40 boxes of books for the kids.
He also noted members of the dojo donated money to help fund the schools. He said one donation of $500 could run three schools for a month.
“With the school system helping with the books and then my students helping with money, it’s really very rewarding and I’m very thankful,” he expressed.
Robinson expects to be back Sept. 17. To learn more about the Williamsburg Dojo, visit its official website.
