What is education? A needless
question to answer. It is a must for everybody to have. Education can totally
makes a change for a person, even for a country to develop. Indonesia itself puts education as priority
to be improved in the society by expending
the budget more for education sector than other sectors every year. It shows
how important it is to be equally spreaded throughout the citizens, especially
for young generations.
Regarding the youth’s
education, according to UNICEF (2015) there were still 2,5 million young people in Indonesia who drop out
of school. Whereas, as it states in
The 1945 Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia Chapter XIII Article 31 (1) that “every
citizen has the right to receive education”. Continuing to encourage its people
to receive proper education, the government has been providing many ways so as to encourage them more in
pursuing the education. For instance, it has regulated a program called “Wajib Belajar 12 Tahun” which empowers
indonesians to pursue their study until high education and it also
provides some scholarships to higher education. In addition, not only government,
several privat organizations in Indonesia offer many kinds of scholarships with
aim to educate their own members,
young generations or even both.
For many people in big cities
in Indonesia, such as Jakarta, Surabaya, Bandung, and others, scholarship is
not a something new anymore but in several places in
East Indonesia, for example my hometown Luwuk, Banggai Regency, I would
probably be one of
the few people who got a scholarship to continue my education. Many
adolescence there stop studying and
work right away after finishing high school or junior high school level. A lot of
reasons they conveyed, some of them said even there is scholarship, the
preparation would take much money and time. Besides, they said, there is no
cheap and intensive institution to take courses such as TOEFL or IELTS which is one of
requirements to continue studying in higher education.
To confront that situation,
actually in Indonesia there is a village that has a lot of english courses
dubbed “Kampung Inggris” which is located in Pare, East Java. More than 150
english courses there offer English course for many different purposes such as for
general purpose that is merely to
learn English,
for working,
or for continuing
study purpose. However this place are visited
mostly by
students who want to pursue their study either in Indonesia or overseas. Even
not e few who are already
studying in their dream university abroad after finishing english
course in Pare.
I myself had been introduced
about many different scholarships after taking a course in one of english
courses here called
Test-English School. This place acquints the
students with not only intensive english learning, but also a lot of
scholarships offered by indonesian government as well as by other governments
or other great institutions around the world. Furthermore, it encourages me to
prepare many things so as to get the scholarship as its motto “We Speak
Scholarship”.
It cannot be
deniable that those encouragements became my milestone to push me to a high
level than i ever thought. As a big result, now, I have been one
of awardees of Endowment Fund For Education (LPDP) which will support me in pursuing
my study to higher education.
While preparing myself to
continue my study in specifically Monash University, I work as a tutor in where
I first studied intensively English. I decided working in this place because I
enjoy to share my experience and knowledge to other people, so that they can be
inspired and can find their own success in terms of pursuing their education to
higher level. Another reason is because I want to contribute and devote myself to
my own country as an ‘agent of change’ in a way that tutoring, helping, and
motivating young people to pursue their education. I hope this action also
could alter the way of thinking people particularly in my hometown or others
with the same condition about how
necessary it is to pursue higher level of education, and
further aid the country to reach
“Indonesia Emas 2045” when Indonesia becomes developed, prosperous, and modern
country.
#AnakBangsaJanganPutusSekolah
