With youth activism, it feels like you make a lot of progress and then some hurdles come along. It can feel tough sometimes, but I have a strong community of young people to tackle these challenges.

Last year, the month of May was difficult as I was advocating for several issues in the education sector in my country, navigating the wave of university student protests across Indonesia, including where I live in the South Tangerang region, while also maintaining partnerships with education officials.

It was also an opportunity to build new partnerships as I attended an event held by GPE in Jakarta where I got to know Deepali Gupta—GPE’s Advocacy and Partnership Specialist for the Asia Pacific region—and met other folks in the education advocacy space.

A few days later, I met with GPE representatives during a visit to the Network for Education Watch Indonesia (NEW Indonesia) headquarters. This was a great experience and gave me the opportunity to talk about the advocacy and programs I do here in Indonesia. It is an honor for me to be a GPE youth leader and to be given these kinds of opportunities.

I also participated in a dialogue with the Ministry of Education on National Education Day on the implementation of the Merdeka Belajar program that focuses on skills development and equipping youth for the future of work.

There are still education challenges in Indonesia that Merdeka Belajar aims to address, namely access to basic education for 12 years for all levels of society.

We discussed the capacity and quality of training educators receive, and how to refocus implementing Merdeka Belajar with a more humanist approach to increase capacity, especially for teachers and across the education system to improve education quality.

This dialogue brought together civil society members working on education at the grassroots level, teachers, educational practitioners and the Ministry of Education.

The impact of youth-driven campaigns for education

I feel that as youth, our voices have become stronger in expressing our needs.

Our youth coalition in Indonesia—consisting of Forumpuan, the Student Executive Council of the Faculty of Education of UIN Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta, the stand-up comedy community, friends of Islamic boarding school alumni and NEW Indonesia—has built solidarity to carry out an educational campaign.

This campaign was held both online and offline as a stand-up comedy competition to gather youth from Jakarta, Bogor, Depok, Tangerang and Bekasi in a light-hearted and informative forum.

Competitors raised many important education issues including teacher pay, scholarships for underprivileged students, stigma against students with disabilities and the need for inclusive school facilities, school bullying, sexual harassment and the increase in university fees.

The competition also helped us gain support for the judicial review of access to K-12 education nationwide, especially from youth communities and nongovernmental organizations.

Building youth coalitions

After the competition, I gathered with fellow students to discuss what we would do next. We decided the competition winner would lead and serve as an icon for the next campaign: the “Young People for Education” in Indonesia.

We also discussed opening up other advocacy channels by involving youth from the arts and entrepreneur communities who also care about education. I hope we can target a wider range of people dedicated to education issues and the implementation of education policies.

By the end of June, I established the Youth Coalition for Education as the realization of our initial “Young People for Education” concept to work on guarding the follow-up of the regulation process on higher education issues, advocating for 12 years of free tuition in constitutional court, and creating safe and inclusive educational environments.

Involving more youth to take campaign commitments forward

In these months since the campaign, I’m busy maintaining youth community development. We want to open as wide a space as possible for youth to express their concerns on education issues.

To raise awareness and popularize the idea that tuition-free school is a basic need for all Indonesian children, we’ve put on a discussion series on how education policies work, advocacy mechanisms, promoting a gender and socially inclusive framework as well as an intersectional analysis on education issues.

The most recent update on our advocacy efforts shows we still have a long way to go, but there’s progress.

At the last hearing, we presented facts and data on school policy in collaboration with PPN/Bappenas. Since, the government announced they will implement free tuition for private schools, which will provide access to education for 238,000 students in Jakarta.

This is a significant first step.

We’ve also held an Instagram Live to raise awareness about unreported sexual violence extortion cases in schools and participated in workshops on educational budget evaluations, minimum service standards and regional planning.

Through these events, we’ve hoped to bring greater awareness of educational issues to fellow young people and the wider public while also promoting education that can be accessed by everyone.

This past October, I was also one of the speakers for the Annual Joint Education Sector Review organized by Indonesia’s local education group and GPE. I represented NEW Indonesia to speak on how data can be used to improve the quality of learning practices and instructional leadership.

Speakers reviewed the performance and achievements of education today in terms of access and quality from the perspective of civil society. I felt this was a good strategy young people can use: presenting both quantitative and qualitative data/narratives to support our points when speaking to policymakers.

Personally, I urged the Ministry of Education to be more precise on their policy implementation, especially given the increasing amount of children who are dropping out and are already out of school due to poverty.

One of the solutions I offered was for local governments to provide free tuition at both public and private schools.

I also urged the task force within the Ministry focused on the prevention and handling of sexual violence (Pencegahan dan Penanganan Kekerasan Seksual, PPKS) to actively work on violence cases in school by involving civil society members as partners.

Moving forward, I hope to develop a new approach to education advocacy in Indonesia by broadly identifying needs, presenting effective solutions, and continuing to foster a safe and inclusive educational environment.