There are many ways to help those in need. When you don’t have the wealth to donate, you give your service. You volunteer. Yet, when volunteering seems to be a noble act of kindness, what’s the impact do people get from volunteering? The programs usually last for only a certain period of time (a few weeks to a month or two). We’ve seen how big institutions try to spread welfare and even after all these years, they’re still far from their goal. Let alone a few weeks of volunteering. But what is it that drives people to give their services for free, despite the lack of impact, perhaps? And how do the program organisers break down big issues into something do-able?
I reached out to my friend Alberta Prabarini who is an active volunteer and have interests in pursuing social cause related career.
Q: Hey, Alberta! How’s life? What keeps you busy these days?
A: Well, I’m finishing off my final thesis and I’m currently an intern at Sokola Rimba.
Q: I’ve heard of it (Sokola Rimba) can you tell me more about it and what you do?
A: Basically, our aim is to educate indigenous people, so these people won’t get fooled. They live in the forests, they can’t read and strangers who have an interest took advantage of their shortcoming to steal their land. About what I do… Well, I’m still an intern, so I deal with the paperwork in their Jakarta office. I haven’t gone as far as physically teaching in the jungles for it require my full time and presence, yet I still have to finish my final thesis. Besides, the volunteers need to be really prepared and dedicated for it’s going to be complicated with permissions and difficulty of access to the outside world. Although I wish to volunteer soon, because I don’t enjoy a desk-bound job where I don’t know what’s really going on in the field.
Q: Why did you choose Sokola Rimba?
A: Because of GUIM (“Gerakan Universitas Indonesia Mengajar” or “Universitas Indonesia Teaching Movement”), a program I joined in campus, I became interested in education. Plus, in my major of anthropology, I study about the society. So, I just tried to align the two things.
Q: Is Sokola Rimba and GUIM similar?
A: No, they’re different by the concept. In Sokola Rimba, education is not defined as our formal education, say, the 2013 curriculum. GUIM is similar with the nation-wide IM (“Indonesia Mengajar” or “Indonesia Teaching”). It’s more local based and uses education as power. Simply, if GUIM chose an area based on the data from the Ministry of Education and Culture in which the problem is measured by numbers, Sokola Rimba chose an area because the society is marginalized as in they are not even registered citizens (no ID). They were asked to write something by strangers and the next day their land is gone. They were being fooled. That’s where education comes in power.
Q: Interesting. But have you always been interested in education?
A: Not exactly. I started volunteering at school by joining some programs my school offered. Then when I entered college, I initially wanted to join MAPALA (“Mahasiswa Pecinta Alam” or “Students of Outdoor Enthusiasts”). But, at the time, MAPALA wasn’t recruiting new members, so I had to find other activities. That’s when I stumbled upon GUIM. I thought it was interesting and for a good cause, so I joined the program as a volunteer. The next year I was part of the organising committee. Then the year after that, I became its Project Officer.
Q: Yeah, I was one of those who witnessed you becoming the Project Officer and I thought it was awesome. Could you tell us specifically about how does GUIM work and what was the main theme you bring when you were Project Officer?
A: In GUIM, we focus on the area where we will teach, which at the time was Pangandaran. So, instead of thinking about a wide educational issue, we start by researching about the area, their educational issues. Because education is a complicated web of problems, so there is not exactly one huge problem, there’s just a network of problems. We try to incorporate the curriculum we commonly know of into the area’s needs. That’s probably the differentiating part with Sokola Rimba; that we still incorporate the national curriculum. Our goal was actually very simple, that is to inspire and motivate the students and, especially, the teachers.
Q: How long did GUIM volunteers stayed in Pangandaran?
A: A month.
Q: In such a short amount of time, how did the program contribute in educational issue?
A: We realise that in GUIM. We keep relationship maintenance with the local communities and, again, our aim is to inspire and motivate. Thus, we were more focused on the teachers, not the children. We have a team designated to train the teachers, because the students come and go, but the teachers will stay. About the impact… Well, we can’t meticulously measure it. But, we have a monitoring evaluation in which we visit the area again after six months to supervise the continuation of what we did. That’s the part where we met a lot of disappointments. For example, we discovered that the library was locked and was only opened on special occasions, or when the kids didn’t pass. Although, we did have our joys when, say, there was this small library we built in Batu Malang through a digital donation platform called Kitabisa.com. When we came back, it was still came of use as intended. There are other joys as well, such as when the kids pass and the teacher became exemplary teacher. We encourage dreams to the kids and even though we can’t measure our success, we must believe that we also learn something when we give.
Q: So, generally speaking, if volunteering programs are mostly done in a short amount of time, what can you say about its significance or urgency?
A: We must be volunteering with and for people who are different from our circle. That’s where we will learn a lot more. Also, whatever the cause is, we must be supporting humanity when we volunteer.