Reflections on KGI and 20 Years in Indonesia from readers, listeners and people working with the Australia Indonesia Partnership (AIP) - Pt 3

One of Kang Guru's roles in Indonesia is to let people know just how much good work is done in Indonesia through the Australia-Indonesia Partnership (AIP). We also tell you about the many other links that exist between our two nations.

Over the years KGI has reported on, visited, and interviewed many of the people who carry out this work. These people, both Indonesians and Australians, may work with development projects in areas such as education, health, agriculture and the environment. Many others interviewed and visited have been involved in other aspects of the Oz-Indo relationship including the wide range of people to people links, sporting and cultural ties, and business.

Here are just a few reflections from just some of those people plus reflections from our regular readers and listeners too.
These reflections are also available in Bahasa Indonesia.

This September edition of the Kang Guru Indonesia magazine marks the 20th anniversary of Kang Guru in Indonesia.

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 in Jakarta
August 2008

Australian Ambassador to Indonesia, Mr. Bill Farmer
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!

People to people and Sport - KGI's June 2008 magazine

Professor Tim Lindsey, Chair, Australia Indonesia Institute (AII)
Selamat! On behalf of the Board of the Australia Indonesia Institute (AII) 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.

BRIDGE participants in Melbourne in March 2009 with Kathe Kirby from AEF, the Indonesian Ambassador to Australia and his wife and far right, Prof. Tim Lindsey from the Australia Indonesia institute (AII)

John Schottler from AusAID's ANTARA project in Kupang and formerly with COREMAP
During the AusAID funded Coral Reef Rehabilitation and Management Program (COREMAP) from 2001 to 2004 we worked closely with Kang Guru as an additional venue to publicise the achievements of the program and provide information for fishing communities throughout Indonesia to better manage the near coastal marine ecosystem. A number of visits to the program sites were made by Kang Guru throughout Indonesia where first hand information was obtained and published on its website and in its magazine. Their readers were not only able learn about good management of the marine environment, but also improve their English reading skills. The tapes sent to radio stations also provided not only information on the program, but supported those wishing to improve their listening and speaking skills. Thus on its 20th anniversary this is an opportunity to say thank you to Kang Guru and congratulate them on 20 years of outstanding service and support to those who wish to improve their English.

Mirah Nuryati from ACIAR in Jakarta
The first time I knew about Kang Guru was back in the 1990s when Kang Guru was managed by Mr. Greg Clough. The interaction has grown significantly since then. I have found KGI to be one of the useful and informative media for raising ACIAR’s profile and public awareness about the research activities we are doing in Indonesia. KGI’s wide distribution across the country has enabled us to reach the interests from those who live in rural areas and share the information and knowledge about ACIAR’s achievements. Our sincere thanks and appreciation for the excellent support KGI has provided us. It is a golden opportunity for us to collaborate with KGI and look forward to strengthening the ties in the coming future. Heartiest congratulations to Kang Guru’s 20th Anniversary and two thumbs up for the KGI Team!!

Mirah has worked with ACIAR for 17 years. During those 17 years Mirah has made regular trips to Australia - Sydney, Darwin, Melbourne, Brisbane are just some of them and of course, Canberra, where ACIAR's headquarters are located.
Full Text - see KGI's March 2009 magazine

John McComb - Australia Indonesia Partnership for Maternal and Neonatal Health (AIPMNH), Oebobo, Kupang, NTT
Kang Guru keeps bouncing back (or is that hopping back?)
I first encountered Kang Guru when I started work in Kendari, Southeast Sulawesi in 2001 on AusAID’s Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies Project (HMHB). Kevin Dalton, Kang Guru’s roving raconteur, came to town to ask about the project, interview staff and recipients, and to also spread good tidings to teachers about the various teaching resources available from Kang Guru for teaching English in schools and at universities. During my four years in Southeast Sulawesi Kevin made several trips, always dropping in to say hi to the team from HMHB.

Later, when I was working in Aceh, in North Sumatra, Java and in Papua on AusAID or other donor funded programs, I often met people who were keen to practice their English. It was great to be able to refer them to Kang Guru’s easy-to-access material on the web or on the radio. Kevin, too, kept popping up here and there, sometimes in Jakarta, sometimes in Bali or other places. Now I am working in Nusa Tenggara Timur, still focused on the health of mothers and children. Hopefully the Kang Guru ‘mob’ will visit us here too. I have been lucky to make some long-lasting friends through Kang Guru and the link it gives us all to English language resources. Oh ya, a special hi to Nani, a wonderful English teacher in Bau Bau, Buton.