Recently I was invited to speak to teachers in Medan. Medan is the largest town in Sumatra, an island in Indonesia.
These teachers were from 3 private schools that cater to students with “special” needs. As these schools are private, non-profit schools, their teachers do not get the benefit of regular upgrading provided by the Indonesian Ministry of Education.
There are many such schools in Indonesia that provide a much needed service to students who are unable to enroll in government schools.
Goducate has already helped many such schools in different parts of Indonesia, and it is now looking into how it can help them to help themselves by sharing resources and helping each other.
For the past 2 months, approximately 30-40 Indonesian teenagers gather each Saturday for a Goducate Teens’ training session.
Goducate staff pick the teens at 230 pm and bring them to a local school with nice facilities for their training.
A small team from Singapore leads the training program, assisted by about 6 Indonesians. These Indonesians are being trained by the Singaporeans to eventually take over their roles.
Indoor bonding session
The first hour is spent in fun activities – both indoor and outdoor. The next hour is spent in small group training sessions.
The Indonesian teens are quick learners and some of them are already being identified to be leaders. When sufficient teen leaders are identified and trained, then we hope to invite more teens to join the sessions.
Goducate hopes to train the youth of Batam to be ‘leaders of tomorrow’ who can bring Indonesia into it’s rightful place as the emerging economy of Asia.
Last month 3 Americans from an established youth camp in America came to Batam to teach us how to run youth camps. The 3 Americans were accompanied by 3 Filipinos from Goducate Training Center in Iloilo, who are also experienced in running Goducate youth camps in the Philippines.
The 6 of them spent 4 days training 180 potential camp counselors, most of them school teachers. These teachers were chosen from schools that Goducate works with in Batam. The counselors were taught the philosophy behind youth camping (ie, how to use camp activities to teach life-principles and lifeskills), principles of counseling and how to run camp activities and games.
After the 4 days of training, 25 of the counselor-trainees were chosen to be counselors in our weekend camp. 75 campers (aged 15 to 16) from a local senior high school were selected to attend the camp. For almost all the students it was a first-time experience to attend such a camp. For the counselors it was an opportunity to put to practice what they had learned earlier that week.
It was such an unforgettable experience for the students and counselors, that every Saturday afternoon since the end of that camp about 30 of them have continued to gather together to meet for “mini-camps” – and continue to learn life-principles and life-skills as they play together!
Goducate hopes that the counselors and campers will soon be able to run camps for other groups of Indonesian youth.
Teachers being trained as camp counselorsCampers enjoying a game
