“Training-of-Trainers” Citizenship Education

Jakarta, August 12-14, 2011

Entering year 2011, Institut Leimena began a “Citizenship Education” program; a 1-2 day training to build awareness on the meaning of our identity as a citizen. For Christian communities especially, the question is – How can one be a citizen of the Kingdom of God and at the same time be a responsible citizen of Indonesia? Both must go hand in hand in order to fulfill the commandment of loving God and our neighbors (Mark 12:30-31) During January of 2011, we introduced this program by embarking on a “safari adventure” to the four cities in Sulawesi: Tolitoli, Manado, Makassar and Toraja

Since then, Institut Leimena has carried out the program in many other places, receiving enthusiastic responses. In order to build this country, it is important to understand what it means to be a legal citizen and the rights and obligations that we have protected under the Constitution; In essence, what it means to be a responsible citizen.

The large number of favorable response has pushed us to increase the capacity of our Citizenship Education team. On 12-14th August 2011, we will carry out training-of-trainers (TOT) in order to prepare the future trainers of the Citizenship Education team.  This training is organized by Budi H. Setiamarga (Director of Center for Policy Analysis), Matius Ho (Executive Director), and Vonny Tjandra (Executive Secretary) from Institut Leimena, along with Weilin Han, a professional trainer from I-Teach whom has also trained teachers from Indonesia Mengajar (Indonesia Teach). The participants for the TOT program are Daniel Adipranata, Puan Siregar, Reza Tehusalawany, Sahat Sinurat, Santhy Chamdra, Taor Siahaan, Viona Wijaya, dan Yanes Sidabutar. Programs such as TOT will continue to be developed so that more people in the community will be able to learn and teach one another to become a responsible citizen.