Injustice:

What Young People Can Do?

Christians and Social Justice Training

At Wisma Bukit Hermon, Karanganyar, Central Java

Injustice and young people? Two interesting points, even this title will challeng every young people to do something toward injustice occured in daily life. What can young people do in such situation if they are inexperienced and lack of networks? This three-days training of Stube-HEMAT helped students and young people to reveal, analyze and find new inspiration to do something.

The training started with an opening worship delivered by Fred Keith Hutubessy S.Si. (Theol), Gadjah Mada University post graduate student of peace studies. He illustrated that not every Indonesian people enjoy development, especially those who live in eastern part of Indonesia, even though this country very rich with various kinds of agricultural products. What really happened? Have young people understood the desparity of the development?

A training module contained ten biblical figures who fought for justice in their time as Joseph, Sifra and Pua, Moses, Joshua, Elijah, Elisha, Amos, Jeremiah, Vashti and Cyrus became the inspiring story for participants and became interesting discussion topic in Focus Group Discussion (FGD) session. The story of the braves with all consequences, risks and impacts of their struggle. Participants were reminded to recall their spirit of Christianity based on the Bible. It will encourage the participants to fight for justice.

The training was attended by many students from various campuses in Yogyakarta, such as STPMD APMD, ITY, UAJY, UST, LPP, STAK Marturia and UMBY. Thirty nine students participated in this training with 13 female and 26 male participants. Most of them came from outside the Java, such as Sumatra, Kalimantan, Sumba, Alor, Flores, Papua and Southeast Mollucas. All participants were very enthusiastic to join the events from Friday (19/02/16) until Sunday (21/02/16).

Two facilitators who experienced in works and struggles against injustice were invited to this training in order to equip participants with new insight, knowledge and networks. They were Rev. Paulus Hartono, M. Min (MCC - GKMI) who shared practical experiences of GKMI how to struggle against injustice through cultural ways and Haryati Pancaputri, SH, the director of YAPHI Surakarta, that shared experiences of LPH YAPHI fight for justice through legal affairs.

Based on the goals of the training, Yohanes Dian Alpasa, the field coordinator of the training said, "Participants were able to retell the content they have got. It can be seen from the dynamics of the groups and their presentations. It means that they have achieved the cognitive level as one of the training indicators".

The highest expectation of the training is when participants understand such issue, they will able to share their knowledge to others. At the Follow-Up session, participants were devided into five groups. Commonly each group planned to hold group discussion at campus, christians students fellowship, student community as the multiplication of knowledge. Participants were also motivated to interact with local community where they live in order to avoid injustice on them. (SAP).