U.S.-based NGO helps poor students get better education

U.S.-based NGO helps poor students get better education

Sri Wahyuni, The Jakarta Post, Yogyakarta

It is really ironic here that many children do not go to school due to lack of funds or access. Yogyakarta has been renowned for a long time as Kota Pelajar (the city of students), meaning that many schools at all levels and students from throughout the country are to be found here.

Many people, too, are still campaigning on how to develop and widen access for children from the lower-income bracket to proper education, at least a basic education, through foster parenting approaches or scholarship programs. A nonprofit group, Global Education Partnership (GEP), however, has stepped forward to initiate real projects to address the issue.

The group tried to invite affected locals to seek solutions to their problems.

The group GEP, better known locally as Mitra Pendidikan Global (MPG), has been working since 1999 to encourage people to voluntarily provide a significant financial contribution to poor schools in remote areas of the province.

Surprisingly, it succeeded in doing so, regardless of the fact that most of the people involved were from poor families.

The group has helped some 179 schools in the dry, barren regency of Gunungkidul to receive aid from local communities.

Director of GEP's Indonesia Division Totok S. Wiryasaputra said the key success of his organization in carrying out the programs lay with the partnership model that it had been applying.

Through the model, the group offers 50 percent of the total funds it needs to finance an agreed program, and the local community is required to collect the other half.

Totok said such a model had deliberately been selected to create a sense of ownership among students' parents that would hopefully, in turn, guarantee the continuation of the program. That way, he said, the program would not exist only at the outset but would be sustainable for further development in the future.

"We've learned so far that even poor people have the capability to fund educational programs for their kids on their own. What they need is simply a stimulus. The funds we have offered in this instance are just such a stimulus," said Totok.

Educational expert Mochtar Buchori once expressed strong support for the program, arguing that in this particular time of crisis it was impossible to expect the government to meet all the country's enormous educational expenses on its own.

The community, Mochtar once said, should contribute according to its financial capability. That way, the country could accelerate improvements to the quality of education and catch up with other countries in the educational field.

"We have been very much left behind in the educational field. Unless something is done about it, we shall always be the servant of other countries," he said, reiterating the importance of developing human resources rather than merely exploiting the country's rich natural resources.

"Singapore and Korea have nothing, but they are much more developed than we are because they have very good human resources," he added.

Based in Washington DC, GEP operates in the U.S., Guatemala, Tanzania, Kenya and Indonesia. The group is a humanitarian, nonprofit, nonsectarian organization sponsored by the GE Foundation, a social institution founded by the General Electric Company.

It started its mission here in July 1999, following a recommendation from the Ministry of National Education, and is still in the process of registering itself with the State Secretariat for official status as an international non- government organization in Indonesia.

"For the first four years to 2003, we were operating only in Gunungkidul. However, we have received requests from communities inviting us to expand our operations in other regions. We are now operating in the regencies of Sleman, Bantul and Kulonprogo, and Yogyakarta municipality as well," Totok said.

It was to expand its area of operations that GEP also moved its offices from Wonosari, Gunungkidul, to Jl. Beji 5, Yogyakarta.

As the main sponsor, the GE Foundation provides annual funding of US$ 75,000. Of the total operational funds that GEP spends, 20 percent usually comes from domestic donors.

GEP was established with as its main objective the provision of assistance to poor youths and students to have better access to education. The group also offers two main programs, an Educational Resource Development Program (ERDP) and the Youth Self-Reliance Training Program (YSTP).

The first is carried out through cooperation with schools and communities while the second is aimed at providing the young from poor families a chance to engage in training, internship and courses.

Totok said, "Our vision is very simple. We want young people from economically less fortunate families to have a chance to become skilled and qualified workers so that they can improve the quality of their lives."