Coordinating Minister Muhaimin Emphasises Role of Pesantrens in Community Empowerment
Bandung (ANTARA) - The Coordinating Minister for Community Empowerment, Muhaiment Iskandar, emphasised the role of pesantrens in community empowerment through education that equips students (santri) with character, skills, and the ability to develop their potential for self-sufficiency.
“Pesantrens are not just places for learning. Pesantrens can be spaces to build humans who possess character, skills, the ability to identify opportunities, and ultimately, the ability to be independent,” he stated in Bandung Regency, West Java, on Tuesday.
He noted that empowerment must begin with building human capacity, as education should not merely provide knowledge but also provide space for students to recognise their interests and potential.
According to him, students need opportunities to develop skills, attempt to create something, and eventually become capable of identifying opportunities that can be developed from their surrounding environment.
This model is being implemented at Pesan Trend, which integrates the national curriculum, Al-Quran education, permaculture, and life-skills-based learning.
“The important thing in empowerment is how these children are not only prepared to seek jobs, but also possess the ability to create opportunities and develop the potential existing around them,” he said.
Muhaimin assessed that various community-driven initiatives, such as Pesan Trend, need to be strengthened through access, mentoring, and collaboration so that their benefits can be felt more widely.
He stated that the government does not need to take over movements that have already grown within the community, but can instead strengthen capacity and expand impact through cooperation with various parties.
According to Muhaimin, the good practices developing in pesantrens can serve as lessons for other communities to build empowerment models tailored to the local potential of their respective regions.
“In the first period, we created a trend; alhamdulillah, from 2015 to 2020, the ‘hijrah’ trend was born in Indonesia. In the second period, we are creating models and locations. This area is one of them, a collaborative space for young people,” said Hanan.
He stated that this model will subsequently be expanded to various regions so that more young people have space to learn, collaborate, and develop their potential according to the character of each region.
“Our hope is that after this, it can scale up throughout Indonesia. This is not a franchise, but a movement. Please imitate and develop it freely according to the needs of each respective region,” he said.
Muhaimin emphasised that empowerment is not intended to make the community dependent, but rather to build the capability so that the community can stand on its own through the development of their inherent potential.