Quality of education is an important factor in the fight to alleviate poverty and creating a higher quality of life. The Tanoto Foundation, founded by Mr & Mrs Sukanto Tanoto has as one of its aims to provide a better education in impoverished areas.
The Tanoto Foundation battles poverty through education in a multi-pronged programme involving students and teachers, as well as sponsoring the creation of infrastructures and institutions. Through sponsoring scholarships to high school and university students whose families are unable to financially afford the higher education; these students are able to complete their degrees. This empowers them to create a better life and break out of the vicious poverty circle, putting them in a position to be able to positively contribute back to their communities. By further training teachers, improving educational resources and creating a support system, the overall quality of teaching is improved dramatically.
Recently the Community Development (CD), which was initiated by Riau Andalan Pulp and Paper (RAPP), together with the Tanoto Foundation, conducted a teacher capacity building program beneficial to both teachers and principals.
Donisius Sasmoyo Hermawan, one of the training specialists from the Tanoto Foundation, says that the training programme is a way of showing the Foundation’s commitment to improve the quality of living through better education. The programme’s participants get taught how to create Learning Implementation Plans and effective weekly lesson planners, simultaneously learning about better time management.
In 2012 the Tanoto Foundation started their first independent teacher training program Pelita Guru Mandiri (PGM) with the aim to develop teacher’s confidence and qualifications. Teachers receive training in areas of development, collaborative learning between teachers and students, and classroom management. Regular refresher training sessions are carried out to ensure that the newly acquired, higher quality of work is maintained by these teachers. Training of each new group of teachers is executed by local teachers who have successfully completed programme facilitator and peer education training.