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Hundreds of communities to run digital literacy programs nationwide
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A sales officer promotes an app-based loan service to potential customers during an expo in Jakarta. (JP/Dhoni Setiawan)
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he Communications and Information Ministry is collaborating with more than 100 communities in Indonesia to run digital literacy programs nationwide.
The ministry’s program emphasizes individual capacity building in its program as it believes that each person should be on the front line in educating their communities about digital literacy.
“The situation in Indonesia is very unique. While digital usage in Indonesia is among the highest in the world, with around 170 million internet users, digital literacy is still relatively low,” the ministry’s director general of information applications, Samuel Abrijani Pangerapan, said in a written statement issued on Feb. 28.
“In order not to lose momentum, we must work hard together to improve Indonesia’s digital literacy.”
Acting head of the ministry’s informatics empowerment directorate, Slamet Santoso, said the ministry was part of the National Movement of Digital Literacy. "It has more than 100 communities joining in. Everybody is working for digital literacy," he said.
Slamet added that the ministry would visit six locations to promote the digital literacy movement in partnership with Indonesian decacorn Gojek, local governments, local communities and members of the House of Representatives.
The program was held to educate the public on staying safe in navigating the digital world and understanding prominent cases of online fraud that have surfaced in the past couple of years, Slamet noted.
The ministry also has plans to visit every school in Indonesia to train teachers so that they could become an active part of creating a digitally literate society.
“Digital literacy is the responsibility of all of us,” Slamet said during a press conference at Gojek’s headquarters in Jakarta on Feb. 28.
One of the communities the ministry is working with is called SiBerkreasi, which was founded with the aim of sharing positive content on social media.
Head of SiBerkreasi Hermann Josis Mokalu, a member of Indonesian pop group Project Pop, told the audience at the event that, after entering its third year, the community had collaborated with 103 different stakeholders from content creators to government officials, carried out its digital literacy programs in 462 locations in Indonesia and had around 182,000 downloads of its 85 digital literacy series books. (ydp)
