Although the government and various parties have tried to overcome the challenges of education during the pandemic, the learning process is still far from optimal. The limited facilities, infrastructure, and geographical conditions have hindered teachers from reaching all of their students quickly enough. This has created stagnation in the offline Learning from Home (Belajar dari Rumah, or BDR) activities. Meanwhile, online BDR is nearly impossible to do, especially in schools that are far from the district capital.
Since February 2021, INOVASI has collaborated with a number of communities and TBMs in five districts in NTT:
- Southwest Sumba district: two communities,
- West Sumba district: one community,
- Central Sumba district: four communities, which will be established into one forum,
- East Sumba district: 12 TBMs, which are together in one forum, and
- several TBMs in the Nagekeo district, which are also members of a TBM forum.
The presence of these communities and TBMs is expected to help students access additional learning opportunities outside of formal education during the pandemic and help parents who are accompanying their children as they study at home.
The role of informal education has long been carried out by the community and TBMs through the provision of reading resources, learning assistance, and the development of the interests and talents of school-age children. Nonetheless, most of the volunteers who mobilize the community and TBMs do not yet have adequate capacity to assist the students when learning. This is because technical guidance from the government is still limited to the community, and the capacity of TBMs themselves is still limited.
On the basis of mutual principles, INOVASI has provided capacity-building support for the community and TBMs. In turn, the community and TBMs will support INOVASI’s efforts along with various parties to optimize learning during and after the pandemic.
Based on INOVASI’s focused group discussions with a number of communities and TBMs in each district, the most urgent need is capacity building, including strengthening the teaching capacity and skills related to literacy and numeracy; child protection; gender equality, disability and social inclusion; mapping of reading skills; library management; and book leveling. Additionally, they need assistance with learning activities for groups of elementary school age students who are accompanied by the community and TBM.
District Coordinator of INOVASI NTT, Yuzrizal, stated, “Materials such as those used for mapping reading skills are important for volunteers. As we know, every child has different learning needs and skill levels, which is why the learning approach needs to be adjusted accordingly.”
According to Yusrizal, the educational background and teaching capacity of each volunteer is different; therefore, these materials are very important for the volunteers to reach the same level of understanding of how to assist children’s learning based on the children’s needs.
Mima, a volunteer of Ana Wanno Lentera Community and also a grade four elementary school teacher in Southwest Sumba district, admitted that even though five of the volunteers in her community have undergraduate degrees, what they learned in college turned out to be very different from the reality in the field.
“We studied in Java, so, of course, the context of the education we got was the context of education in Java. When we returned to Sumba, we were confused about how to make our learning strategies suitable for the children here,” explained Mima.
INOVASI will facilitate the establishment of inter-community networks with stakeholders and help the community or TBMs obtain legality so that they will continue to receive support from stakeholders. Capacity building activities for volunteers will last until June 2021 with several stages of training and mentoring, monitoring, reflection, and evaluation.