JP/Mohammad Yazid
For those parents who can barely afford to put food on the table for their families, let alone give their children pocket money, the government’s nine-year education program introduced for primary to junior high school students in 1993/1994 is yet another financial burden.
Why? Because they — they could be scavengers, vendors and casual workers — are already struggling to eke out a living, therefore do not consider education as a necessity. Government programs rarely address this issue.
So Irina Amongpradja, a graduate from Padjadjaran University’s school of Medicine in Bandung, decided to tackle the problem herself, and set up an informal education group called “Sekolah Kami” (Our School) in Bintara Jaya, Bekasi, West Java, in 2007.
Along with several peers, she converted a 1-hectare garbage dump into a school for children of scavengers and the needy.
Currently there are three semi-permanent and modest buildings used as an office, a multipurpose room and classrooms for 135 students.
A fish breeding area, a plant nursery and an elegant garden are also part of the compound.
Nine regular Sekolah Kami teachers teach formal subjects like Indonesian, mathematics and religion to first to sixth graders as well as various skills like soap making, paper recycling, composting and sewing to give the students skills from which to make a living in the future.
Students passing Package A (primary level) tests will be sent to SMPN 252 junior high school, East Jakarta, and those finishing Package B will be referred to vocational training centers.
“We need to listen to our hearts to understand what they’re facing and what’s implicit,” said the doctor, who was the head of the public health center in Dili, East Timor (now Timor Leste), from 1984 to 1989, to The Jakarta Post.
Scavengers, in her view, live as an aggressive, egoistic and rivalry-laden group. To change their attitude to become less opportunistic and more aware of their environment, “We should be open to and feel affection for them,” said the 52-year-old, who is known as Ibu Ina. “Now and again they also need to be taught the gist of ‘learning to live’, rather than living just to eat and sleep.”
She once followed the scavengers for a day, while they sold and recycled used plastic to understand how they lived. Her close ties with trash gatherers can be seen in the land their homes stand on next to Sekolah Kami.
Her approach has created a learning atmosphere characterized by cheerfulness, mutual respect, cooperation, amicability and courtesy — traits that are completely foreign to scavengers in general, who tend to have been hardened from years of struggling in life.
Her lead in providing free education has prompted many parties to offer various kinds of material and non-material aid. Two Swiss and Dutch citizens teach English on Mondays and Tuesdays. Sam Ujo, the son of Bandung’s angklung (bamboo) music group founder Mang Ujo, also teaches angklung music monthly or weekly.
“At first it was only a play group,” recalled Ibu Ina, who married a fellow doctor she met while assigned in East Timor. In 2000, when friends took her to visit Wisma Transito in Bekasi, she saw eight big barracks accommodating hundreds of migrants who had to evacuate their homes during conflicts in different regions like Aceh and Banjarmasin.
Ibu Ina and her friends were initially only planning to meet the food needs of the evacuees’ children, but then realized the parents paid no heed to education.
So she decided to form a small study group to teach math and reading in the barracks. Unexpectedly, scavengers’ children gathered and showed interest in participating.
After only two years, the barracks’ management banned her activities. However, her concern for the children prompted her to forge ahead, and in 2002, Ibu Ina secured a permit to use a building owned by the Intermediate and Higher Education Office of East Jakarta in Pondok Kelapa. With her peers, she repaired the damaged house and equipped it with school furniture and material, and turned it into a community-learning center called Pelita Hidup.
In 2006, she faced the same predicament when the East Jakarta education office instructed her to cease her activities because the building had been earmarked to become a “study group studio”.
Initially she was pleased with the idea, until she discovered that the studio intended to charge fees.
But she did not lose hope amid her students’ clamoring for continued schooling. Her concern finally led her to the garbage dump, on which the owner allowed the construction of the study group complex. Sekolah Kami can accommodate 150 students.
Born into a Muslim family, Ibu Ina claims to have learned the Koran by rote. She attended primary school in the 1960s in Russia, where her family followed her father, who was a military attaché. She attended Santa Angela Catholic School in her birthplace, Bandung, as a junior and senior high school student.
Her diverse educational background has made it easy for her to appreciate Indonesia’s pluralistic society. She also teaches her students to do good deeds regardless of religious, ethnic or cultural differences. Once, Sekolah Kami’s angklung group — performances of which have been aired by two TV stations — participated in a Christmas program in a Jakarta church, overseen by school teachers who mostly wore Muslim head scarves.
Her experience while on medical assignment in East Timor and on her return to Jakarta, which frequently caused disappointment due to bureaucratic red tape, prompted her manage the school independently.
With the income from students’ skill-based products helping her to cover the school’s expenses, she often turns down conditional aid from agencies or individuals.
“I don’t want to spend my time making proposals,” said the doctor, who resigned as a civil servant at the age of 40.
Ibu Ina is pleased to see those showing the same concern buy the products of Sekolah Kami, such as the Blue Bird taxi company, which regularly purchases the school’s soap for washing its taxi fleet.
When ask what the future holds for her school, she replies: “I prefer dealing with what we can handle today rather than think about what may happen several years from now.”
It doesn’t mean she doesn’t have a plan, but concrete action for her has more significance than concepts.
