Asia PR News

WASHINGTON, D.C., Dec. 23 /PRNewswire-AsiaNet/ –

Indonesian and American sponsors will break ground early next year for a
community high school that can help raise educational quality in an area that
just a year ago was the site of one of the world’s worst natural disasters.

The school on the campus of the University of Syiah Kuala (Unsyiah) in
Banda Aceh will serve as a laboratory for improving teacher training and
developing new curricula to prepare Acehnese youths for a globalized world. "We
can be the agent of change in improving the quality of education," said Dr.
Darni M. Daud, Unsyiah’s vice rector of academic affairs. "Aceh needs this
model. Hopefully, schools nearby will learn (from it)." He also hopes the lab
school could inspire similar standard-raising in the other corners of the
Indonesian educational system.

Unsyiah’s major partner is the United States-Indonesia Society (USINDO), a
Washington-based educational institution dedicated to improving knowledge of
Indonesia and the importance of the bilateral relationship. With much of Banda
Aceh and the entire northwestern coast of Aceh in ruins following the tsunami,
in early 2005 USINDO talked to many officials and citizens in the province to
find how it could contribute to the rebuilding of the school system. "We had to
find the right niche since clearly the ‘biggies’ — Save the Children, UNICEF,
World Visions and others of that scale — would be doing the main
reconstruction in this field," recalled Margaret Sullivan, the USINDO
coordinator for the lab school project.

The idea for that project came full-blown from Dr. Daud. He had for years
harbored plans for a lab school for Unsyiah’s College of Education and Teaching
(FKIP) but could not act on them because of funding difficulties and the tense
security climate in Aceh. Dr. Daud’s brainchild finally found an ideal
co-parent in USINDO which seeks as one of its objectives the restoration of
productive ties between Indonesian and American institutions of learning.

"This people-to-people effort epitomizes the strong relationship between
our two countries," said Alphonse F. La Porta, the USINDO president when the
project was announced in October.

The response to USINDO’s call for support for the Unsyiah lab school has
been heart-warming. American school children have raised more than $300,000 to
underwrite the costs of building the classrooms. Major donations have come from
Do Something Inc., a national youth organization active in tsunami relief, the
students and alumni of the Jakarta International School, and from walkathons,
car washes and bake sales organized by a number of schools including Greenville
and Seely Place Elementary Schools in Scarsdale, N.Y., Trinity School of New
York City and St. Johnsbury Academy in Vermont.

Corporate donors have also been responding generously. In addition to a $1
million contribution from Newmont Mining Corporation, the AIG Disaster Relief
Fund is adding $500,000 to the Aceh school project. Ned Cloonan, the president
of the AIG fund, said that in addition to the USINDO school project it is also
supporting other "initiatives in the tsunami-affected region that rebuild
critical elements of civil society. We are also supporting other important
initiatives in the region, including providing significant support for the
construction of a major fish market in Banda Aceh." The AIG fund has collected
over $2 million for tsunami relief from AIG employees and partners across the
globe, and contributions to the fund were matched dollar-for-dollar from the
company’s coffers. AIG has been operating in Indonesia since 1928, and
currently has over 1,500 employees in the country.

Much more, of course, has to be done to rebuild Aceh’s educational
infrastructure. The Indonesian Ministry of National Education has estimated
that the tsunami destroyed or damaged as many as 1,520 primary schools, 290
junior high schools, 170 senior high schools, 20 technical and vocational
schools and 20 institutions of higher education. But it is the community’s
strong sentiment not just to restore the system to its pre-tsunami state but to
construct an even better one over the ruins of the old. That is why Unsyiah is
counting on the lab school to be a living demonstration of the future’s
potential.

Unsyiah, named after a noted scholar in the 16th century court of the
Acehnese sultan Iskandar Muda, is well-qualified to be Dr. Daud’s idea of a
change agent. Its education college, according to the campus newsletter Warta
Unsyiah, is the university’s largest single unit with nearly a third of its
teachers and almost half of its students. The teacher trainees will practice
their skills in the lab school under the eyes of master teachers. The
university had no such purposely-built facility before the tsunami. At the same
time Unsyiah has given serious thought to what Acehnese children should learn
from their schools.

Dr. Daud believes that the curricula should meet national educational
standards established by consensus, and that it should continue to respect
Aceh’s Islamic traditions. But he also wants them to satisfy "the demands of
the age of development." By that he means a stronger emphasis on math and
science, more internet and foreign-language training. The lab school thus will
have more computers along with the training in their use than the standard
Indonesian school. If a related USINDO project materializes, the lab school
will be hooked up by a wireless internet service to other campus institutions
and the immediate community.

The lab school plans, designed by Jalaludin and others on the faculty of
Unsyiah’s school of architecture and engineering, aim to earthquake safe and to
use space to foster learning. Quick egress in the event of an emergency is
assured by wide staircases and a number of supplementary exits. Classrooms
themselves are larger, more flexible, lighter and airier than standard
classroom, features that create a good ambiance for learning.

The university intends to share the lab school’s resources as widely as
possible with the community. A multipurpose hall, whose cost will be borne by
another USINDO partner, Bank Danamon’s Danamon Peduli (Cares) Foundation, will
be available for use as a community center after school hours. The funds for
the hall were raised through personal donations from the bank’s employees,
customers and stakeholders in the immediate aftermath of the tsunami. "Once it
is completed, our volunteers will teach adult education at the community center
in response to needs expressed by local community leaders. USINDO’s
people-to-people approach struck a cord with us and we very strongly support
education," explained Sebastian Paredes, the president-director of Bank Danamon
who also sits on the Foundation’s Board of Trustees.

A library for research and reading material will serve the lab school’s
teachers and students as well as those of two neighboring schools. The
ExxonMobil Foundation has made a generous grant toward constructing the
library. JIS Cares/JIS Peduli, a philanthropical arm of the Jakarta
International School, is assuming the responsibility for stocking the library
with an appropriate collection of books and periodicals.

The Aceh project may also qualify for assistance under President Bush’s
$157 million Indonesia Education Initiative aimed at supporting a joint
U.S.-Indonesian commitment to revitalize education for the next generation of
Indonesian leaders.

Also partnering with USINDO and the University on this innovative project
are the Department of Schools, City of Banda Aceh, the Department of Schools of
Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam, the Ministry of National Education and the Sampoerna
Foundation, a Jakarta-based organization that has been working on educational
projects in Aceh for many years.

For more information on the USINDO Aceh School Project and the Lab School,
please contact Project Coordinator Margaret Sullivan at
danmargsullivan@earthlink.net, or Education Officer Tom Spooner at
tspooner@usindo.org, subject line: Query about Aceh Lab School.

USINDO is a private, nonprofit 501(c)3 organization incorporated in
Washington D.C. whose mission is to increase understanding and awareness of
Indonesia in the United States and to promote a better appreciation of the
U.S.-Indonesia relationship. For more information on our other programs and
projects please visit our website at http://www.usindo.org.

SOURCE: United States-Indonesia Society

CONTACT: Margaret Sullivan,
danmargsullivan@earthlink.net, or

Tom Spooner,
tspooner@usindo.org,

both of the United States-Indonesia Society,
+1-202-232-1400

Web site: http://www.usindo.org