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Since 1989, Kang Guru Indonesia has provided a combination of English language learning, people-to-people links between both countries and a vehicle to broaden and deepen our partnership into one of great regional and global potential. Over the last two decades, Kang Guru Indonesia has reached hundreds of thousands of students, teachers and communities. Kang Guru radio is now broadcast weekly to more than 160 radio stations across Indonesia.
The Kang Guru Indonesia magazine has been distributed to more than one million English language learners. Thousands of schools across Indonesia have also benefited from Kang Guru Indonesia’s English language curriculum support materials, workshops and online learning resources.
History and geography have thrown our countries together, but it is the active and creative engagement of our peoples and governments over six decades that has come to bind us as neighbours, friends and partners. We cooperate in practical ways on a wide range of issues, such as climate change and helping each other respond to natural disasters. Expanding ties between our two people strengthen our partnership even further. The Kang Guru Indonesia program is helping to ensure that future generations of Australians and Indonesians know and understand each other better. This will help see an ongoing genuine partnership with our neighbours and friends in Indonesia.
I congratulate Kang Guru Indonesia on its significant achievement and 20 successful years.
Mr. Stephen Smith
Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs |
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My wife, Elaine, and I first connected with Kang Guru in January 2006, just after I began my posting as Australian Ambassador to Indonesia. The KGI team invited us to visit their office. Ever since then we have both watched and enjoyed the work that the KGI team does in Indonesia as it contributes to stronger Australia – Indonesia ties and understanding. Besides promoting the work of the Australia-Indonesia Partnership, KGI also manages to find interesting people to people activities which really reflect the close bonds that do exist between people of both countries.
It has also been good to see the valuable work that KGI does with teachers and their students across the country. I sometimes look over the KGI website’s Travel Reports of the team and I am always impressed by the ground they cover and the people they meet as they promote the English language and the Australia-Indonesia Partnership. Good luck to the KGI team for the future and for right now, hearty congratulations on your 20th Anniversary and one final word to describe you – marvellous!
Australian Ambassador to Indonesia, Mr. Bill Farmer |
Mr. Farmer in the KGI office
with Ogi from KGI |
Selamat! On behalf of the Board of the Australia Indonesia Institute and its Secretariat I send heartiest congratulations to you and all your colleagues at Kang Guru on your 20th anniversary!
For more than two decades Kang Guru has worked to build bridges of understanding between neighbours. It has helped countless Indonesians develop a better understanding of Australia - and Australians of Indonesia too.
This is important and influential work and through it Kang Guru has made two very important contributions to our bilateral relationship. First, through Kang Guru’s broadcasts, websites, newsletter and seminars you have shown very clearly how effective language training is in bridging differences between cultures. Second, you have also shown is how enriching that bridging can be, for everyone involved. Almost always it comes with smiles and brings knowledge and understanding. It reminds us that the sometimes-obscured commonalities of being human are overwhelmingly more important than the often more obvious and superficial differences created by culture and tradition.
And this matters not just because it makes us feel warm and fuzzy (which it does!), but also because in globalised world where travel and the IT revolution make distance increasingly less tyrannical, the capacity to bridge cultural difference is fast becoming a ‘core life skill’. It is, in fact, becoming a form of currency, an item of profound value in a world that is slowly transforming from being one where identity is rigidly based on national and ethnic categories, to one where identity is multiple and shifting. We now live in world where we often select from identities, and move between them as the moment demands, depending on whether we are talking on Skype to someone on the other side of the planet, chatting to classmates or to grandparents at home, or doing a job interview in Jakarta or Melbourne. In this sense, your work at Radio Kang Guru is an very significant investment in the future of our two countries and peoples.
We at the Australia Indonesia Institute are lucky to share a mandate with Kang Guru. Our job is also to build bridges of understanding and friendship between Australia and Indonesia through people-to-people links. We have been hugely assisted in our efforts to meet that challenge by the tireless support and enthusiasm of Kang Guru and its staff. In fact, it often seems as though no matter what event we support in Indonesia, and no matter where, Kevin Dalton and his staff are always there – do you people never sleep!?
So, again, congratulations to Kevin and the team – hiduplah Kang Guru! - and here’s to the next twenty years: juang terus!
Professor Tim Lindsey,
Chair, Australia Indonesia Institute (AII)
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