TEMPO.CO, Education - Lulut Adelia (15 years old) is now going back to school after two years not having a formal education due to an economic issue. The Back to School Movement was first initiated by Fatayat (women wing of Nahdlatul Ulama) in Brebes Regency in 2013 and was managed systematically in July 2017, by Brebes Regency and Australian Government. The movement which is funded by Dana Desa and private sector has successfully turn in 7,212 dropped out children back to school for the 2017-2018 school year.
Australian Government through Australia-Indonesia Governance Partnership KOMPAK gives a technical support; start from planning and budgeting, assisting until project reporting. Kompak, in collaboration with FMPP (Community Forum for Education), built Selapanan Team consisting 10 volunteers in each village to collect the data of dropped out children in age 10-18 in a door to door mechanism. The data showed that 7,722 school-aged children in Brebes Regency were ready to go back to school.
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KOMPAK is trying to work with the local officials and the local community to ensure that they are informed of the issues that are important in the local context. "Not by bringing an idea that might have worked somewhere else, then say this is what you need do to solve your problem. But there needs to be a process between the local officials and local communities of working their own solution together,” Minister Counsellor Australian Embassy Fleur Davis explained while monitoring the development of the program in Brebes Central Java on Tuesday, May 8.
The significant increase of the children who are going back to school makes Brebes Regency allocates Rp5.7 Billion from the regional budget for 13,000 children in school-age for the 2018-2019 school year. “I think it will be good if it (Back to School Movement) becomes a national movement,” Director General of Villages & Disadvantaged Regions Samsul Widodo added.
