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:
- To teach a revised curriculum to the local students in the religious school that reflects the values of Yayasan Hidayah Bangsa.
- Begin vocational training for the students, which usually would include such things agriculture, fish farming and English language learning.
- 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.