FAQ

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Definitely! We are always looking for people who want to help us with fundraising. In Indonesia, we have Naomi Indah Sari as our fulltime employee, who addresses all the needs of our students. We thus don’t offer volunteering projects in Indonesia that involve getting in touch with our students.

(Self)reflection and communication are key to all successes! We are in contact all the time, reflecting on every step that we take together. We do not have a hierarchy within our organisation and encourage everyone in our Heliconia Community (staff, cooperation partners, students and graduates) to share their feelings and opinions. This enables us to constantly improve our work, because all voices are heard and we are aware of each other’s needs and progress. See Heliconia Community, under Mission & Values, and Founding Story for more information.

We have only recently started financing scholarships for young Indonesian men, because of the good contacts that our cooperation partners have with various girls' shelters. However, since 2019 we also work together with a boys' shelter. We aim to offer more young ambitious men a Heliconia Scholarship in the future, because when selecting candidates, we mainly want to focus on the personal motivation of the candidate, and not necessarily on gender. Moreover, in Indonesia more female than male students are enrolled in tertiary education. Accessing higher education is mainly complicated by social background, and less by gender. We thus want to support youngsters of all genders who have the motivation and perseverance to study in university. See Mission & Values and our Policy Plan for more information.

Thanks to the legacy of our sponsor Mr Koijmans (see Sponsors page), we now have a full bank account! However, selecting and guiding students requires lots of care. Not all high school graduates have what it takes to study in university. Therefore, we don’t focus on allocating as many scholarships as possible, but on providing scholarships to the right candidates, who truly have the ambition and perseverance to obtain a degree. We prefer to work on a smaller, personal level, that enables us to be in close contact with all members of our Heliconia Community. That’s why we are in no hurry to spend our reserves! Yet new donations are very welcome, because they enable us to continue our work, also in the future. See the next FAQ for more information.

For the past years (2015 - 2020), our main focus was on creating a strong foundation for our work. We are now ready to share our mission to an international audience, attract new donors and carry our work far into the future! We intent to accept five to eight new students into our program each year. See Mission & Values and our Policy Plan for more information.

First of all, it’s wonderful that you intent to help others! The most important thing in doing so, is to first make a thorough needs analysis. What are the actual needs of the people that you aim to support? And what are the needs of the NGO? To find that out, encourage everyone involved to share their feelings and opinions. Create a safe environment, in which every voice is equal and taken into account. Take time to find the perfect working method together, and always keep in mind that open communication and (self)reflection are key to fruitful cooperation! See Founding Story to learn more about our journey.

You can donate to us by using PayPal, credit card, iDeal or by doing a direct bank transfer yourself to our bank account in the Netherlands. You can also authorize us to directly debit your account. Go to our Donate page for more information!

For donors with IBAN, our preferred donation method is (recurring) direct bank transfer, because then no processing fees are charged. See our Donate page for more information! For donors without IBAN, you can donate to us with credit card, PayPal or iDeal using the donate button on our Donate page. Thanks for your support!

You can donate directly to our bank account in Indonesia, to avoid international transfer fees. Please go to our Donate page for our Indonesian bank details. Thanks for your support!

To start recurring donations to us by using direct bank transfer, please log in to your own bank account. You can set up monthly, quarterly or annual donations to us yourself. Please go to our Donate page for our bank details! To stop recurring donations, also log in to your bank account and cancel your donation plan there. Thanks for your support!

To start recurring PayPal donations, please go to our Donate page and click the Donate button. You can choose if you want to donate monthly, quarterly or yearly to us. Log in to your own PayPal account to stop your recurring donations. Thanks for your support!

To start recurring credit card donations, please go to our Donate page and click the Donate button. You can choose if you want to donate monthly, quarterly or yearly to us. Log in to your own credit card account to stop your recurring donations. Thanks for your support!

To start recurring donations in which we directly debit your account, please go to our Donate page, click the Direct Debit button and fill in the form. You can donate to us once or on a monthly basis. To stop your monthly donations, please send us an email with your request and your contact details. We will stop automatically debiting your account. Thanks for your support!

Your gift will be used with care. The Heliconia Scholarship Foundation aims for all donations to directly benefit the students. The board in the Netherlands therefore works on a voluntary basis and receives no salary for their work. We have one parttime staff member in the Netherlands and one fulltime staf member in Indonesia. All hours worked for our foundation are registered and monitored by each other. See our Remuneration Policy at the Our Team page for more information. Any other costs in the Netherlands and Indonesia are limited, and mainly consist of website hosting and maintenance, bank fees and transportation costs of our cooperation partners to visit the shelters, universities and students. Transparency and openness are essential in creating a fair, just world, in which all finances are accounted for. You can therefore find all the details of our finances in our financial reports. Go to our Financial Reports page for more information. If you still have questions, please contact us!

Within our organisation, financial transparency is guaranteed because all board members can check our bank accounts in both the Netherlands and Indonesia. All our expenses are reported and come with a receipt. We receive a monthly transaction overview from Indonesia and also send our annual transaction overview from our Dutch bank account to our cooperation partners. All hours worked for our foundation are registered and monitored by each other.

A donation that was transferred by the donor her/himself is a gift which is officially not refundable once it is deposited into our account. However, if you truly feel that your donation should return to you, please send us a message, then we will see what we can do! Donations that were directly debited from your bank account by us are officially refundable for 56 days. Get in touch with us if you would like your donation to be transferred back to you.