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Aisyiyah empowers women through writing training
A group of 30 activists from Muhammadiyah’s women's wing Aisyiyah attended a one-day training program on popular article writing organized by Aisyiyah’s Cultural Institute, which aimed to empower women through writing.
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The training was part of Aisyiyah’s national 'Love Knowledge' movement, which has also seen the establishment of libraries in Indonesia's 34 provinces to encourage people to read. (Shutterstock/Undrey)
A group of 30 activists from Muhammadiyah’s women's wing Aisyiyah gathered at the organization’s headquarters in Yogyakarta on Sunday morning.
Among them were lecturers, teachers, civil servants, private sector employees and housewives. Each brought with them laptops, ready to spend the day learning how to write articles or well-written posts for social media.
They were participants of a one-day training program on popular article writing organized by Aisyiyah’s Cultural Institute, which aimed to empower women through writing. It was expected that improved writing skills would be helpful to them in many ways including allowing them to counter hoaxes.
“Hoaxes cannot be fought with hoaxes, only with good writing,” chairperson of the training’s organizing committee Widiyastuti told participants at the opening of the event.
The training was part of Aisyiyah’s national “Love Knowledge” movement, which has also seen the establishment of libraries in Indonesia's 34 provinces to encourage people to read.
The training included how to select topics and titles and make layouts as well as writing exercises. The speakers comprised lecturers, writers and experienced journalists.
Improving peoples’ reading habits and writing skills, according to Widiyastuti, was a focus of both Muhammadiyah and Aisyiyah. “This is what we want to revive,” she said.
Both the online media run by Muhammadiyah and the social media accounts belonging to its members were yet to be optimally utilized, especially by Aisyiyah’s members, mostly because of technical obstacles such as a lack of writing skills, she added.
Sunday’s training program will be followed by a nationwide movement called Aisyiyah Menulis (Aisyiyah Writes) to introduce the organization’s thoughts to the wider public and to improve the organization's capacity to document its activities in writing.
“With more and more Aisyiyah women capable of producing positive narratives, we hope we will be better able to fight hoaxes,” Widiyastuti said.
Through writing, she added, Aisyiyah wanted to create generations that were optimistic, well-mannered and capable of thinking positively.
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“We hope to influence the life of the nation through the media,” said Widiyastuti, who is also deputy chairperson of Aisyiyah’s Cultural Institute.
As an initial step, the Cultural Institute has created a Facebook account named “Aisyiyah Menulis”.
The institute has invited all participants of the training to send a friend request to the account to join other activists from all over the country to encourage each other to write, especially on their respective Facebook accounts.
Aisyiyah Menulis also has a WhatsApp group for the training participants to share guidance on how to write about their ideas or information, or just how to write a comment on social media in an interesting and responsible fashion.
“Our initial target is indeed social media. The next will be online media managed by Muhamadiyah,” said Widiyastuti.
She expressed hope the training would improve the writing skills of Aisyiyah’s activists and supporters. Aisyiyah, she said, had many inspirational agendas the public should know about.
“Writing can be a bridge to the public so they can know what Aisyiyah has done and its ideas for the life of our nation,” she said.
Aisyiyah deputy chairwoman who oversees cultural affairs, Susilaningsih Kuntowijoyo, shared this sentiment, saying that the training offered a chance for the participants to explore their respective potentials.
“Our potential is already there, but our education system does not encourage us to develop our writing habits,” she told the participants during the opening of the training.
Juni Riyanti, a participant, concurred, saying that she initially felt insecure about being around writers, many of whom had frequently been published in the mainstream media.
Yet, after beginning to write just one or two paragraphs she felt encouraged.
“It’s worth trying,” Juni said. (mut)
