Kang GURU
Travels to Makassar — January, 2007
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by Sue Rodger
The skies were clear as I left Bali on Thursday the 10th and an hour later we
were touching down in Makassar. I checked into the hotel and after a quick
lunch I went to SMA 2 to meet Pak Hamzah. Pak Hamzah is a very dedicated
English teacher and for many years has been organizing exchange trips for his
year 10 and 11 students to visit Australia. During the interview he explained
the process to organize these trips. Pak Hamzah said there were many problems
organizing the first exchange was but he was determined to succeed. He told
KGRE that organizing the visits has become easier as he now has many contacts
and knows the process well, but each trip still takes between 6 months and a
year to organize. A group of students and three to four teachers go on each
trip. In Australia the students stay with host families and Monday to Friday
they join Australian students and attend lessons at the local school. At the
weekend they visit local tourist attractions. The students pay for the trips
themselves. Australian students have also visited Makassar on several
occasions. Why not visit
Pak Hamzah's website.
At SMA 2 I also met Ahmad Firdaus. He works for Study in Australia in Makassar.
He has been working at this office for nearly 2 years since completing his
scholarship in Australia. He too wanted to learn from Pak Hamzah's experience.
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Later in the afternoon I went to Masjid Almarkaz Al Islam to meet Edi and the
members of the MAKES Club. About 30 members came to the meeting and had lots of
questions for KGRE. A favourite topic was about how to get scholarships. I
suggested they visit the ADS website for complete information or talk to two of
their members who had successfully been awarded scholarships. We also discussed
how to make lessons interesting for teenagers and ways to improve vocabulary.
Almost everyone in the club had a question to ask and it was lovely to meet the
members of this club who are keen to practice English at their meetings 3 times
a week. I stayed till evening prayer time and as the members went to pray I
returned to the hotel.
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Next morning I visited Jackie Pomeroy from the Smallholder Agribusiness
Development Initiative (SADI) This is a new a new program which focuses on
economic growth and poverty reduction for farmers in Eastern Indonesia by
introducing them to ways to increase their productivity, and then showing them
how to process the produce themselves. The program is building on proven
ongoing government and donor programs and is expected to run for 10 years. SADI
was busy establishing itself in a new office in Makassar and inviting other
participating groups to join them so that there will be good communication on
the program.
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