banyu bening

Siang itu, sebuah Kamis yang terasa begitu membosankan di belantara ibukota di awal April ini, tiba-tiba terbersit ide brilian untuk berbincang, tentang apa saja dengan seorang teman yang sungguh aku kagumi, sejak hampir sepuluh tahun yang lalu ; Butet Manurung. Yah, rasanya tiba-tiba urusan pribadiku seperti menjadi sesuatu yang banyak orang merasa berhak untuk ikut campur. Termasuk membuat penilaian tentang baik dan buruk, salah dan benar, barangkali tanpa terlebih dahulu bercermin.Biarlah, itu hal biasa dalam hidup. Dan siang itu di Pasar Festival, berbincang tentang "segalanya" dengan Butet, membuat hidup kemudian terasa lebih ringan. Cerita tentang anak-anak negeri di belantara Jambi sana, di tepi pantai Halmahera dan Maumere, Bulukumba, sedikit "penyesalan" pada perjalanan kami di waktu yang berbeda ke Nepal, mimpi tentang Afrika Barat dan gunung-gunung yang terlalu indah untuk tidak didatangi. Akhirnya, tentang bagaimana membuat "ide besar" dia soal SOKOLA tetap bertahan, bagaimana menghidupinya di masa mendatang....sekedar untuk bisa tetap berbuat sekedarnya bagi anak-anak negeri di daerah terpencil, membuat mereka berhak berkompetisi secara adil dalam hidup modern yang maha rakus ini. Secara pribadi, untuk menjadi pengingat, agar aku tidak terlena dan merasa nyaman duduk, menikmati makanan di mall-mall mewah di Jakarta ini. Inilah Sokola...mimpi yang begitu mulian dari seorang perempuan kurus dan beberapa kawannya. Mimpi yang telah menjelma menjadi hal nyata namun yang tetap memerlukan dukungan dari banyak orang, dari kita semua....

SOKOLA – Alternative Education Community

Sokola is an independent association that focuses on facilitating an alternative education within indigenous communities throughout Indonesia – mainly those whose lives depend on the forest or sea or who lack access to government education because of cultural values, isolated locations or emergency or crisis. In the Rimba dialect, Sokola means school or learn or education

■ History

Sokola was established by six people who formerly worked for the conservation based NGO WARSI as part of the ‘Habitat and Resource Management for the Orang Rimba (Forest People) Project’ in Bukit Duabelas National Park in the province of Jambi on the Island of Sumatra. The Orang Rimba (or People of the Forest) are a people who live very mobile lives under the rainforest canopy based on hunting, digging for wild tubers, and often swidden farming.  They are live by the traditional customs and religion of their distant ancestors. According to their beliefs, this way of life depends on maintaining the purity of their customs as well as a degree of distance from the outside world.  In this day and age this is becoming extremely difficult.  For the last 30 years, their forests and traditional way of life have been under threat from large scale logging, the establishment of massive transmigration settlements and related palm oil-plantations.  From 1998 to 2004, the members of Sokola were involved providing basic mobile education to the Orang Rimba community, as well as access to health services, securing land rights, and advocacy and fundraising, in support of WARSI’s overall goal of forest conservation. 

    During the fifth year of WARSI’s project (2003), many of the Rimba people, especially the students, began to question the relevance of education towards maintaining the continuity of their life in the forest. Many were thinking, “Sure, now we can read, write, and count but our forests are still being destroyed by logging. What is the relevance of education to our lives in the forest and how can it help us to meet the challenges faced by logging and secure our traditional way of life and cultural values for future generations” For the Orang Rimba, logging and the destruction of the forests, threatens not only their economic basis but also their social and religious values and their larger cultural identity as forest people.

   Based on this awareness, in 2003, six of us resigned from WARSI to establish SOKOLA, in an effort to provide more focus to issues related to alternative education within the Orang Rimba community and for other traditional peoples who face similar challenges. Officially registered on April 13^th 2007, Sokola began to formulate a concept, method, and curriculum for providing alternative education based on discussions with popular (and critical) education practitioners and community based organizations, while continuing to facilitate alternative education for the Rimba people in the forests of Bukit Duabelas. 

    Sokola compliments basic education (reading-writing-counting) with relevant ‘outside’ knowledge of life, law, activism, and the government and private interests which impact their lives in the forest. This supplementary knowledge allows local communities to understand and organize a means to respond to some of the challenges faced from the outside, from within the context of their own life worlds, customs and traditions.  We also organize a means to correspond and meet with outside interests, decision makers, activists, and the media, so that local voices can be heard and participate in matters which impact their lives.  Our larger goal is that Sokola can become an avenue and place for community learning, for the Rimba people and other indigenous peoples throughout Indonesia.  We hope to create an environment that can stimulate a critical understanding of the larger world, and can provide indigenous peoples with a means to deal with the different challenges that they encounter. This will give them a means to anticipate change and allow them to respond to it from within the context of their own life and cultural worlds while still being able to maintain their distinct cultural identities.  We strive to do this in a manner in which the programs can be self sustained by local communities and become self-reliant. Since beginning Jungle School with the Orang Rimba in Sumatra, Sokola has expanded its programs to other communities throughout Indonesia who face similar challenges or have encountered an emergency or crisis situation through natural disaster (earthquakes, flooding).  We also now work with urban sub populations which including poor and homeless children.  

   Sokola is currently running “School for Life” programs for indigenous peoples with various needs in 10 locations throughout Indonesia, which include the following: Sumatra: 1. ‘Jungle School’ for Orang Rimba communities, province of Jambi; 2 ‘Emergency School’, for victims of the tsunami in Aceh Jaya; Java: 3. ‘Emergency school’ in the traditional village of Dukuh, Garut, province of West Java; 4.  ‘Emergency School’-Children’s Shelter in Bantul, Jogjakarta province; 5. ‘Emergency School’, for displaced children following the earthquake in Klaten, Middle Java province;       Celebes: 6. ‘Coastal School’, near the city of Makassar, South Sulawesi province; 7. ‘Konjo School’, for Kajang Community, Bulukumba, South Sulawesi province; Mollucas: 8. ‘Jungle School’ for the Tayawi, forest people in the jungles of Halmahera island, North Mollucas, Flores: 9. ‘Island School’ Wailago Village on Besar island near Flores island, East Nusa Tenggara province, 10. ‘Egon School ‘for the Pigang Bekor people of Egon mountain, Flores island, East Nusa Tenggara province.

    Sokola has the following strategies to meet the needs and goals of the communities it serves: Grounded research within local communities in order to understand and guide or programs,  training and providing live-in facilitators in local communities; curriculum development and syllable methods for reading and writing; training and the establishment of local cadres in order to expand their reach and make the programs sustainable and self-reliant; the training and involvement of independent volunteers; establishing local participatory community centers, networking with other alternative education advisors; activists and community based organizations; consulting and speaking on relevant issues at community and formal events; bringing in guest teachers, activists to speak to local communities; campaigning and advocacy through the media; communities; fundraising activities which include the sale of Sokola merchandize (tee-shirts, calendars) and traditional crafts from the local communities we serve; maintaining an interactive website in order reach and involve the national and international community in our projects.