I flew to Surabaya, probably for the 6th time this year, and then by car I traveled to Malang arriving at the Graha Cakra Hotel around 7.00pm local time. KGRE’s newest staff member, Cheryl Reid, was already in the lobby of the hotel chatting with her driver. Cheryl had come up from Paciran to join in with the KGRE workshop planned for the following day. Cheryl will be doing many of the future KGRE workshops so we thought it was a good opportunity for her to follow one and see what goes on.

The KGRE workshop was a kind of special one. Many years ago, way back in 2002/2003, the Australian Indonesian Youth Exchange Program placed their people in a village near Malang. The village was called Punten close to Malang. After their stay in Punten, the AIYEP students, both Indonesian and Australian, produced a CD of local Punten poetry and songs which they then sold to teachers of Bahasa Indonesia in Australia. The money earnt from sales of those CDs was used to provided participant sin this workshop with KGRE SMP Teacher Packages for the English language teachers from the district. These 75 packages were distributed to the participants at the end of the workshop. In collaboration with the Cultural Attache at the Australian Embassy, KGRE and DIKNAS, the workshop was organized. Teachers were invited, the venue was organized and promotion was done.

Special guest were invited to attend including Fiona Hoggart, Cultural Attache at the Australian Embassy (centre). Fiona flew down from Jakarta the night before the event. Fiona was accompanied by Amanda Mitchener, Embassy PR. Other guests included Bevis Worcester and his wife (far left). Bevis is working in Kupang with an AusAID sponsored project looking at the illegal fishing trade going on in Eastern Indonesia. KGRE will be featuring the work of this project in a few months on KGRE. Ben and his wife (far right) were both AIYEP participants back in 2002 and met on the exchange program. They are now married and working in Canberra but returned to Indonesia for a holiday AND to be a part of the workshop event. Pak Iqbal, the Team Leader of the 2002 AIYEP Indonesian group, was also at the opening of the workshop. All five of them went off to Punten during the morning to renew old acquaintances and reminisce.

The KGRE Teacher Workshop began at 8.00am on June 1 st at Pusat Pengemoangan Penataran Guru Teknologi in Jl. Teluk Arjosari in Ajosari. There were 75 teachers and they were keen and quite motivated for the workshop. Free packages were given out after the workshop and they were most appreciative of the efforts of the AIYEP people who supported the event.