Indonesia: education for a better future
Origins: education against child labour
Colruyt Group imports products from all over the world. In the early 2000s, we decided to take even more social responsibility in our ‘supplier countries’. In this, the focus lay on the problem of child labour. This is what ultimately created Collibri Foundation for Education. Because education is the ideal leverage against child labour.
Read more about how Collibri Foundation’s work in Indonesia took shape.
In Indonesia, Collibri Foundation is currently financing computer classes and primary schools, and we support students from secondary education with a scholarship. Selected students in higher education follow a special programme. Some of them are doing an internship at Colruyt Group. More recently, we also set up a project concerning a secondary agricultural school.
In all these projects, we collaborate wit the Indonesian Foundation for Child Welfare, YKAI.
Quality education for every child
A safe ‘playground’, hygienic accommodations, didactic materials, etc. Materially speaking, the quality of the Indonesian schools in the early 2000s was a disaster. Training and pedagogical supervision of the teachers was also a difficult issue.
That is why between 2004 and 2008, Collibri Foundation helped support a school innovation track in 22 primary schools in the area surrounding Semarang. Spearheads of this project were school renovations, the introduction of student-oriented teaching, and new school books.
Scholarship programme for secondary school students
In Indonesia, education is only compulsory until the third year of secondary school. Higher secondary education, therefore, is optional. The scholarship programme for higher secondary education wants to give children from financially poor families the chance to go to school longer.
The scholarships provide financial stability for both the students and the schools. They also ensure a steady group of teachers, so they can work on a reliable curriculum.
Higher education for better chances
Initially, we mainly focused on young people’s education. The boost to go to school until they are 18 has made many young people dream of higher education. That is why Collibri Foundation took the initiative to turn those dreams into opportunities. In 2005, 4 young people were selected to attend a university for the first time. Today, we collaborate with 5 universities who offer a broad range of programmes.
Internship at Colruyt Group
In order to motivate the young people even more and to give them a better chance in the job market, Colruyt Group decided to offer them the chance to do an internship at the company in 2010. The students are expected to fully commit. They have to be very proficient in English, and they have to do a large assignment during their stay in Belgium.
In this video Isadora, Lia and Municha talk about their experiences.
Read more about Iva’s internship in 2015.
Future: the agricultural school
Our project in Indonesia is still growing. In 2013, we first visited the secondary agricultural school set up by the Kanisius school group. There, we discovered the organic fertilisation product that school develops and sells itself. But the school is lacking the means to do this profitably. Collibri Foundation now wants to support a project to professionalise the school.
Goal of the project is to start a business within the school, in order to stimulate the young people’s entrepreneurial spirit.
