The Need for a Helping Hand

Our current global political situation has left the world feeling divisive and unforgiving. Varying media sourcesareconstantly feeding into people’s biases, painting an inflammatoryversion of one side to suite the other. In a political sphere that feels so torn is there anything we can all agree on? Is there any resolution that may alleviate the stress in a bipartisan manner? In the history of humanity, we are not divided, we have built more togetherand only destroyed ourselves through strife,so it’s time toinvestigate solutions.

Knowledge and education may be our common denominator,something we canhope all our children will aspire to. What about everyone’s children? What about the our enemies children? Education is the answer, allowing our future generations to nurture their future and create a fostering, safe world through self empowerment.Now we are in the most critical time for education,and theautonomyanddevelopment that follows.

Equipping future generations with the abilityto move up the social and economical ladder will be the first step to alleviating the issues of instability created by lack of development. The Hoshizora Foundation, and other education programs, have become essential in assisting global development and improving global inclusion of the developing world. The Hoshizora foundation raises funds andfinds sponsors to provide scholarships for underprivileged Indonesian youth who would not otherwise be able to afford an education, yet exhibit the desire and skillsto excel in school. Indonesia is a unique country that carries therichness gathered frommany cultures and has become the country it is today from a varying history ofpower struggle and influence;the history of education has been no exception.

During the Dutch rule in Indonesia, public and accessible school for the Indonesians was never developed until the last couple years of colonialism. Dutch rule during this time only allowed for education in order to fill civil service jobs to serve specific duties in society. Thus in the following years after Indonesian independence, education became a high priority. The second president of Indonesia, Suharto focused heavily on educational progress and success yet the process was not seamless. While there was a lot of socio-economic progress under Suharto, there was also a lot of corruption.

Ironically Suharto’s desire to be inclusive of the diverse cultural backgrounds existing in Indonesia, realized in his political ideology which was unity of thenation, resulted in the exclusive of the largest religion in the country, Islam. Traditional Islamic wear was banned from schools, even on the Islamic day of prayer, Friday. Now we are experiencing Indonesian schools increasingly going Islamic, the Islamic wear becoming the school uniform and prayers becoming a morning ritual. Populists will push a religious agenda claiming it may counter youth delinquency such as drug abuse and teen pregnancy. Education has shown to be one of the most effective tools against such delinquencies, yet many are distracted by the ongoing social power struggle. Nevertheless, social concerns and varying opinons have consistentlyhave played a rolein the history of educationdevelopment.

Since colonial rule and Suharto’s presidency, education in Indonesia has also been effected greatly by the Asian Economic Crisis of 1997. This crisis hit those in poverty the hardest and many students had to drop out in order to help support their families. Before the Asian Economic Crisis, average enrollment rate was at 90% of the population, during the crisis it dropped at least 25% and schools had to start imposing fees on families due to lack of funding. The crisis of 1997 was the hardest blow to the education system that was still maturing, a force powerful enough to pressure Suharto to resign and take years to recover from fully. We observe that economic factors and social discrepancy have created barriers to the development of a more successful education system.

The history of colonialism and economic hardship haveleftIndonesia with apoor education structure, and recovery has been positive but slow. While there is much debate surrounding the outcomes of Suharto’s presidency, the lengths of current economic limits and differing opinions regarding religion in education, these examples shed some light on what we see now manifesting in the Indonesian education system. Indonesia has struggled to keep up with other developing Asian nations that are excelling in education exponentially, even though Indonesia has had success in raising the literacy rate and attendance rate. We see great feats in attendance numbers for primary school in the last couple of decades, but pushing kids from primary, to secondary and on to university appears to be the real task at hand. Assistance in the form of fiscal funds, emotional support, to help students through finishingat least basic education, and creating opportunities to attend university is what Hoshizora offers the underprivileged youth of Indonesia.

This is why foundations and programs such as Hoshizora have formed, to lend a hand to the students who crave the opportunity to excel in school; we want to give them the tools that didn’t exist before. Indonesia is a country boasting arich,diverse culture, along with many natural resources, complimented by extremely unique, kind and resourceful people. There will always be interferences in the process ofdevelopmental efforts, but supporting access to education is the easiest way to face these issues from the ground up. We believe in the people and thus we wish to equip whoever is willing to help contribute to their beautifulcountry, and world, vast with possibilities.

Resources used in writing the article:

http://factsanddetails.com/indonesia/Education_Health_Energy_Transportat...

https://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/indonesia_statistics.html

How to Get Involved

Check out our website, there is information about how to become a sponsor and information about what we do! http://hoshi-zora.org http://en.hoshi-zora.org