description
ACWAY Nusantara Project is a joint project between ACWAY Participants Indonesia (Azizah Syiami Mutik) and Singapore (Lina Sakina Salim) with aims of bringing new perspectives to high school students and encourages Interfaith/ Intercultural dialogue for peace and harmony. Also, to open their minds to the differences that exists out of their current world. The project started from 18-28 January 2016 and is divided into 2 phases; first phase (18-23 January 2016) is sending out project proposals to schools, and second phase continued with project execution from 26-28 January 2016. Taken as a whole, ACWAY Nusantara Project was successfully executed.
Day 1
Place: SMA TMI Roudhotul Qur’an (Roudhotul Quran Islamic Boarding School )
Time: Monday, January 26th 2016 at 10 am – 12 pm
The first day execution of ACWAY Nusantara Project in SMA TMI Roudhotul Qur’an was great. We got full support from the teachers and the headmaster. Students understood the explanation and presentation that were all delivered in English. However there were obstacles from the short time allocation and the less cooperative students. SMA TMI is an Islamic Boarding School that follows an Islamic-based Curriculum; as such daily classes start at 9.30am instead of 7.30am and mid-day break for Dzuhur prayers is at 12.15pm. This has limited the time given and thus affected the delivering of the material. Fortunately, we managed to deliver most of the presentations and main activities however the group activity “Statement of Peace” was forwent and presentation on “Introduction to Interfaith” was made short and delivered verbally.
The second obstacle was in handling less cooperative students. It took some time to properly divide the students into mixed-gender groups as it was made understood that these students rarely have such activities in their curriculum and may not be used to interact with people of other classes and of different gender. To coax these students to cooperate, we explained to them on the main purpose of having mixed group members is to encourage dialogue and mutual understanding. We also received aid from the teachers to manage this situation.
Nevertheless, the delivering of the project was great with support from school and teachers. Some students are very interested in ACWAY, interfaith and intercultural activity and continued to talk to us separately after the session ended.
Day 2
Place: MAN 1 Lampung Timur (Lampung Timur Islamic High School)
Time: Tuesday, January 27th 2016 at 9 am – 12 am
The second day execution in MAN was a great success. The school maintained good communication related to the preparation; students were very active and interested to the activities; and the time was sufficient to deliver all presentations and tasks (individual and group).
We did not face any specific problems that could disturb the programme delivering however we came in short with manpower as (Anistia) who was supposed to help us on operational matters (taking pictures and being laptop operator) couldn’t make it, but we figured it out to do shift presentation so all was fine till the end. Students also managed to send us the pictures taken by them via social media with hashtag #ACWAY.
Day 3
Place: SMA Negeri 1 Metro (1 Metro State High School)
Time: Wednesday, January 28th 2016 at 9 am – 12 am
The third day execution of ACWAY Nusantara Project in SMA Negeri 1 Metro was also a great opportunity. We used a different approach to the students, as SMA Negeri 1 Metro is a state school with students of diverse religious and cultural backgrounds. While in SMA TMI and MAN 1 Lampung Timur, we used the Islamic approach to the issue of Interfaith and Dialogue, here in 1 Metro we brought a different perspective of academic and friendship based approach to encourage students to be brave and to be open to dialogue and strive for peace and harmony in their respective community, or even within their circle of friendship in school.
We were supported by the student council since the teachers were having another meeting, and the number of students was only around 80 students from 100 that we expected. But the whole process ran well and we were grateful for that.
Cooperation Evaluation
Starting with 5 target schools with different background of education system (state school; Islamic school; Christian school) we eventually had cooperation with 2 Islamic schools and 1 state school. The others were humbly rejected our proposal due to higher priorities they had at that point. Nevertheless, the project represents 3 schools with different educational system, which we think gave challenges and uniqueness to ACWAY Nusantara Project.