Tomorrow night at 7:30pm (Thursday, October 28th, 2009) at Habana Outpost, Brooklyn’s “eco eatery,” a benefit for an amazing and vital learning center in Indonesia called The Learning Farm, will be held involving awesome food, awesome speakers, awesome music, and me, your awesome host!

Here’s what Boston-based NGO and founding organization World Eduation has to say about The Learning Farm’s purpose:

In Indonesia, poor, vulnerable youth have been deeply affected by the country’s economic crises and lack both education and economic opportunities. Many feel hopeless at a time when they should be optimistic about the future. Lacking education, skills, or support, they are at risk of being trapped in a cycle of poverty and never realizing their full potential.

The Learning Farm seeks to address the lack of skills, opportunities and hope amongst vulnerable Indonesian youth by providing entrepreneurial and life skills training in the context of an operational organic farm. Located in Puncak, West Java, the Learning Farm provides Indonesian youth with the tools and skills needed to live healthy and productive lives and become change agents within their own communities.

The Learning Farm is a community where vulnerable youth can find opportunity and support; an educational center where these youth can obtain practical skills and knowledge; a productive organic farm as the primary educational medium; a social enterprise where youth apply their new skills to benefit themselves and support the sustainability of the Learning Farm; and a networking center where experience and lessons learnt are shared with other organizations working with vulnerable youth as well as with the community at large.

The farm serves as both an educational center and an organic farm, where students take responsibility for tasks related to running the farm and participate in structured learning activities that utilize a “learning by doing” approach. The farm’s curriculum includes basic literacy, numeracy, and critical thinking skills, organic farming, enterprise development, health, life skills, computers, and English. Using environmentally-sound growing methods, the youth work in teams to produce organic vegetables for their own consumption and also for sale. Most importantly, the farm has become a community where young people feel welcome, work directly with supportive adults, and have a chance to focus their energy and intelligence on building meaningful skills and relationships that will help them over the course of their lives.

Speakers include:

• Ji Way Tung of the Learning Farm.  Click here for video.
• Ben Flanner from Greenpoint’s Rooftop Farms.
• Beekeeper Meg of Brooklyn Honey.
• A pickling demonstration by Shamus Jones of Brooklyn Brine.
• Michael Haggerty and Raj Kottamasu, 1st Place Award Winners of the Resilientcity.org design competition.
• Joann Kim, Chief Organizer of the fabulously new fresh, local, and poised on the brink of greatness, Greenpoint Food Market.
• Special musical performance by Darcy and Mark Dunn.

Please RSVP to [email protected].

If you cannot make the fundraiser but would like to contribute, please email [email protected] for a PayPal donation page.

Habana Outpost is located at 757 Fulton St., Brooklyn, NY 11217.  Take the G to Fulton St. or the C to Lafayette Ave.

See you there!!!

Headline photo by Gill & Andy of Bogor Blog.  Midroll photo by David Hagerman of Eating Asia.