Literacy Program participants proudly showing off their national exam certificates in Kubu Raya, West Kalimantan, Indonesia
Yayasan Planet Indonesia
Literacy Program
Our Literacy Program creates access to basic education for our partner communities, especially rural women and youth, who lack the ability to complete their education. Our evaluative admissions method ensures students graduate through our literacy program in the shortest possible time in order to capitalize on opportunities for employment and further studies. We take the support of organizations who are experts in the education sector in Indonesia such as Pusat Kegiatan Belajar Masyarakat (PKBM). PKBM is a registered Indonesian NGO that provides literacy training and administers government national exams. Students who pass the national exam receive a certificate that helps with job placement and improves access to the labor force.
As part of this program, we also support the training of local tutors in partnership with local government schools and PKBM. By training local people to become tutors in their communities, we reduce the costs for community members to gain access to basic education in hard-to-reach communities.
Key enabling factors for this program include the willingness of local students who lack access to such services to participate in the program. This building block also is enabled by participatory design (e.g. both problem and solution) and mapping. Through this exercise facilitators can work with community members to draw links between various social barriers and overall social-ecological outcomes.
Similar to other social-economic services described in our approach, education services serve as an important entry point and building block for creating positive and healthy relationships with communities. We have also learned education and health services seem to be particularly important at incentivizing for the participation of women in the overall community-led scheme. This is essential as community-led conservation cannot be properly achieved without gender mainstreaming.