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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