British Council celebrates 50th jubilee
British Council celebrates 50th jubilee
The British Council celebrates 50 years in Indonesia this year and will be marked with several events.
Most immediate is the "Sign-up Sessions" planned for five cities -- Jakarta, Bandung, Semarang, Surabaya and Bali -- beginning June 13 and June 14 in Jakarta.
It features Fast Track processing for admission to educational institutions in Britain, particularly for over 400 scholarships. The emphasis being Britain is doing all it can during the monetary crisis to help with Britain offering 20 percent to 60 percent less in costs to students.
Also in June is a British Film Week and an English Language Teaching Conference in Malang.
A Photographic Exhibition is September will feature Europeans in Asia and Asians in Europe.
Shakespeare's play The Comedy of Errors will be brought to Jakarta in November by the Watermill Theater.
Other British Council activities have included:
* An Asian Development Bank (ADB) funded contract (US$4.2 million), which commenced January 1997 to develop the English language capacity of 14 lead universities, mainly in eastern Indonesia.
* The British Chevening Awards in 1997, which attracted 5,000 applications for about 70 places.
* Management of the training of some 300 Indonesians in Britain, under various contracts to the British and Indonesian governments included funding by the World Bank and the ADB.
* Professional support for the development of environmental education centers in East Java and South Sulawesi.
* Two thousand trainees underwent English training at the British Council's Language Center in 1996. Clients included banks, industrial and commercial concerns, hotels, airlines, teachers, nurses and many government officials. This is a full-cost recovery activity generating a turnover of over 750,000 per annum.
* The Jakarta library has 9,000 members, with an average of 250 people visiting daily. On-line access to the Internet and other database is now established. The Surabaya Center has 2,000 members and hosts a wide range of seminars and other activities.
* The Kosh dance and drama group toured in December 1996; 900 students attended one performance at Petra University, Surabaya.
* Senior educationalists developing an accreditation system for all higher education undertook a special study tour to the U.K. in April 1997.
* On-going research links, funded through a DFID grant, include fisheries technology in Semarang, tropical peat forestry in Kalimantan, regional planning for Bali, development of agricultural entrepreneurs in Sulawesi and West Java and public health in Yogyakarta.
The British Council also opened five Indonesian-British Education Centers in major cities in Java and Sumatra. These are providing assistance and study opportunities in Britain to large numbers of students.