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Peace Camps

Overview

Indonesia is an archipelago of thousands of Islands, 737 languages, over 300 ethnic groups, along with religious diversity. Though 87% of the country is Muslim, there are also Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, and other tribal religions within Indonesia. The complexity of these factors together has produced fertile ground for conflict in every area of society, and the geographic isolation only aids in the potential for prejudice, fear, and conflict to grow within communities. Because of this, many Indonesians never have a chance to meet or learn positive things about other ethnic or religious groups, especially within rural areas.

The Peace Camps are run within differing communities (rural to urban) to provide a safe place for groups in conflict to meet each other, and break down the many factors which divide them. This is a first step in alleviating poverty and low quality of life in their communities by reducing the potential for violence and opening up minds away from extremist influences, which stifle education and promote division.

The Need

The major need within Indonesian communities in regards to conflict situations has been to have a safe place for both sides to talk as equals and to get to know the other. Often fear, terrorism, and racism keep people from ever talking to each other in society, but at the camps there is a rare opportunity to be face to face and even to work together without fear of conflict arising. This answers some of their deep needs of forgiveness regarding hatred they have had in the past, and leads to new initiatives and projects they can do together to produce peace in their communities and alleviate poverty together. All peace camps are built on the locals taking initiative and creating their own projects for peace.

Our Vision

Our vision is to contribute in the transformation of conflict regions into peaceful communities. Our key targets are the young people and leaders, wanting them to develop skills in peacemaking, hearts of forgiveness and compassion, and a mindset that is open to others as well as their cultures.

Education and Reconciliation: The goal of the camps is to empower Indonesians to take hold of all the tools within the camps for peacemaking, and then to see them multiply that out into every village and community across Indonesia, using their own visions, projects, and creative solutions to their communities problems and conflicts

How we achieve this

Each camp is two days long and covers the topics of:

  • Celebrating Diversity
  • Collaboration
  • Conflict Transformation
  • Servant Leadership
  • Project Creation

This is done through a dialogical method of education, which forces each participant to share their own experiences, ideas, and personal application of what is being discussed. There are between 50-100 people at a camp, from diverse and even conflicting backgrounds and communities. The camps usually happen at retreat centres, or other places that can house the entire group. This then requires event management and local coordination for all the logistics. Each camp is named and run by the locals hosting it, and therefore is uniquely designed for that community to meet its needs and goals. Training of future facilitators is a goal for the future multiplication and sustainability of the project. This happens simultaneously with the camps themselves.

Our Program in Meeting these Needs & Issues

The first Peace Camps were done in March 2018, where there was a rural camp (involving 5 Islamic Boarding Schools and 2 Christian Bible colleges) and a University camp (involving peace activist students from 20 Universities throughout Indonesia). Multiple new community development projects were started, and continued, by participants of the camps. This has now opened the door for many new communities desiring camps on other islands, cities, and schools.

During the camp people learn together, eat together, share together, work together, and dream together about what their communities could look like through the lens of working for peace. This has produced answers to the needs they identify within their communities of corruption, racism, poor education, poverty, gender inequality, and extremist ideologies. The new projects they create then become the answer to the needs in their communities. Some of the outcomes of the camps have been:

  • Up to 400 people a year will have face-to-face personal interactions with those of other cultures and faiths.
  • Approximately 400 people a year trained in peacemaking, and sent back to their communities to create new peacemaking and development projects

As a result, every camp produces large networks of relationships for future projects and collaborations between communities.

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Flourish: Women’s Empowerment

Overview

Flourish: Empowering Rural Muslim Women with a sense of Worth, Strength and to be a Positive influence in their communities

The Flourish program is for all women, with the main focus of this program in rural settings. Many of the women work as farmers, with their husbands often in Jakarta seeking to find work, and generally they would see their husbands only a few times a year when they come home. Because of this, women are often bringing up their children on their own.

The purpose of Flourish is to inspire and empower women to realise that they are valuable, capable, and that they can live a life of purpose and benefit to their family and community. Strong, healthy, positive and purposeful women can change their environments for the better, even in difficult situations.

The Need

The Flourish program seeks to build up the women by instilling in them value, self-confidence and worth into them. Often the women do not have a strong sense of their value, because of how they are treated, and often others dominating them. Some women feel trapped and controlled.

These women need a safe environment to share their stories and learn tools about how to better cope in their situations. The Flourish program equips women with tools on how to manage their emotions, recognize their strengths and weaknesses and respond to situations in a positive way instead of negatively reacting. We have helped women learn to set healthier boundaries for themselves and in raising their children.

Our Vision

The goal of seeing strong purposeful women raised up is to then see whole families and children begin to develop so that communities can be healthier and empowered to live better lives. We aim is to train up many women to be Flourish Trainers who can then teach the Flourish course throughout their region we are working in Central Java, and beyond.

How we achieve this

Flourish is a 9 – Session Life Skills development program that empowers women. The 9 Sessions lasts for 2 hours each, with all the participants who finish Flourish receiving a certificate.

For some women it is the first certificate that they have ever received, as many did not finish school, which is one way to place value on these women. Through the encouraging and inspiring videos and life stories that are shared in Flourish, along with Role plays and problem solving real life scenarios that are indicative of their culture, the women learn to deal with difficult issues in healthy ways. This approach is very interactive and is suitable for illiterate women. With our trainers speaking the local language, they can connect with and empathise with the women on a deeper level which really opens the women up to share their challenges.

Our Program in Meeting these Needs & Issues

The project has been running for about 10 months in this region. Many women have been through the course and have reported improvements in communication within their families, as well as experiencing a new level of confidence. The Flourish program is very well accepted, and many women want to join the next course. Some of the structure of the course includes:

  • Monthly programs 9 x 2hr session completed over 2 weekends
  • 6-15 women (mostly Madrasah teachers or farmers)
  • New group every month, with over 120 women per year
  • In addition to the above, there are now 4 local facilitators (from the 120) who are equipped and trained to lead and run the programs themselves
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Pesantren Education

Overview

Pesantren Education: Empowering Pesantrens with Life Skills and Modern Education

In Indonesia, there has been millions of youth trained in Pesantrens over the past 200 years.

This project reaches out to young people who have been entrusted to rural religious schools in low socio-economic areas throughout the Indonesian archipelago. Generally poverty exists within these schools, as well as a vulnerability to extreme teaching.

Hidayah Bangsa provides training to teachers in Pesantrens, overseeing a training centre that sends trained teachers across Indonesia into Islamic Boarding schools, with those teachers being commissioned to provide vocational skills as well as a curriculum that promotes appreciating cultural diversity.

The Need

Empowering Indonesian Rural Pesantrens with Life Skills and a Message of Hope

These low cost pesantrens are located in most villages throughout Indonesia. These training centres, for young people between the ages of 6 – 16, are often isolated from the modern world and have had two negative affects:

  • Firstly children who are disconnected from their families’ structure and entrusted to religious leaders, can become vulnerable to extremist teachings…
  • Secondly, although these children have memorised traditional Muslim teachings, they have minimal life skills.

The majority of children left at the pesantren are those who come from families who have low income, with the pesantren being the instrument to teach children a life of discipline. They are taught to accept whatever the circumstances, surrendering their life to Allah, without considering a better way of life. The circumstances are considered as the pre-determined will of Allah, that they are to accept, even though the children have the ability for innovation and creativity.

Discipline can be very harsh. Many children run away, many are traumitised, some growing up to embrace an extrmist ideology, with little value of themselves. The end result has been many unskilled and unemployed youth, easily motivated in angry mass demonstrations. Because of a lack of funding from the Middle East, as well as decreasing local support, aspects of this training are being questioned.

Generally, the local leader of these pesantrens has not had any exposure to other approaches to education. They have learned traditions via rote learning, usually being the memorization of Arabic and religious traditions. From our experience, the local religious leader is open to new approaches, such as providing vocational skills and reframing the curriculum to have more of a multicultural emphasis.

Our Vision

The purpose of this project is to provide young people in rural religious schools vocational training that will enable them to have a better future. This is achieved through Education and Economic Empowerment.

The young people within the pesantrens are the future leaders of communities scattered throughout Indonesia. When these rural schools are influenced in a positive way, it will impact in future years when they become young leaders within their local communities. Our goal is to sustainably train and send out teachers to all of the pesantrens within Indonesia to improve the quality of education.

How we achieve this

Once educators are adequately prepared, trained and equipped in Central Java by Yayasan Hidayah Bangsa, the project workers are sent to the location of the rural religious school that has previously signed an agreement to receive them. The project workers sent are initially accompanied by a senior worker of Yayasan Hidayah Bangsa, and have mentoring visits usually every 2 months afterwards. The project worker usually has 3 aspects to his role:

  1. To teach a revised curriculum to the local students in the religious school that reflects the values of Yayasan Hidayah Bangsa.
  2. Begin vocational training for the students, which usually would include such things agriculture, fish farming and English language learning.
  3. The same values are taught to the broader local community.

Our Program in Meeting these Needs & Issues

Currently there are over 30 pesantrens that are in partnership with this program. These include having sent educators to the following locations.

Pulau Ratu: Riau, Batam

Sulawesi: Makasar, Palu, Kendari

Indonesia Timur: Ternate, Papua, Lombok, Bima

Kalimantan: Balikpapan, Banjar, Pontianak

Sumatra: Jambi, Padang, Lampung, Bengkulu

Jawa: Situbondo, Madura (dan lain-lain)

A key component of this project has been working in collaboration with local leaders and communities. This is important for acceptance and sustainability of the work. In each of the 30 locations where educators have been sent, it is based upon a previous mutual agreement. All of the educators who have been sent are national Indonesians who have a similar religious cultural background to their new environment of where they work.

Over the past decade, the leadership of this network have been teaching and mentoring local leaders in over 50 different pesantrens throughout the country. They have connected community, and helped the local government to modernize Islamic education, and redesigning their curriculum to, amongst other things, provide life skills and an appreciation for diversity and multiculturalism.

In this work, Hidayah Bangsa has relationship with 90 pesantrens in Central Java, whilst throughout Indonesia Hidayah Bangsa has relationship with over 250 pesantrens. Atleast 40% of these have a traditional methodology, with conditions as described above. Hidayah Bangsa endeavours to bring a new methodology to these pesantrens, bringing a spirit of gentleness.

Hidayah Bangsa provides an education to all pesantren teachers about principles of education, and how to discipline. This is especially through the example of the teacher we send to the location.

Through the educators sent, Hidayah Bangsa provides small business enterprises within the Pesantren to improve the quality of life. Some of the projects include:

Lokasi Pesantren Proyek
Riau, Sumatra Cabe, Kangkung
Makasar Budidaya Ikan
Palu Sayur Organik
Padang Pohon Jeruk
Lampung Timur Bawang
Batam Budidaya Ikan
Banjar Sayur Mayur
Bengkulu Pupuk Organil
Papua Sayur Mayur
Madura Pembuatan Batu Bata
Ternate Pertanian (Padi)

Another service provided for the traditional pesantren is skill-development. The child is seen as someone with potential, with such things as English, computer and marketing lessons provided.

The Campus: Related to this project, a 7,000m piece of land was donated to the Training Foundation, to build a training campus that will provide vocational skills as well as spiritual formation. The local community has been involved in this Project from the beginning. A number of partnering Islamic Schools have committed their young people to further their training in the proposed campus.

Once trained, those young people will relocate to teaching positions in other areas, and have the necessary skills to generate a basic income. In January, 2017, a Community Event was organized, attended by the mayor, Muslim leaders, and over 200 local residents, where the Foundation Stone was laid.