Lembata Pangge Bale

(Lembata calls back)

Participant’s reflection on Local Exposure Program done by Mariano Lejap

Coming home during campus break becomes ritual for students like me who go to Yogyakarta to study. When I went back to my hometown, I was usually easily affected by local atmosphere so that it seemed no changes in me. I just did similar activities in every campus break, such as going back to village to visit relatives or gathering with young friends.

But now, I have different vacation, as a participant of Local Exposure program of Stube-HEMAT Yogyakarta, and a member of Stube-HEMAT Yogyakarta work team, I was challenged to do something different. My current vacation is a vacation plus, by giving contribution for my village by sharing computer knowledge I have learned in campus and it made me be closer to local community and know them better.

First, when I offered program to share my knowledge to the village officials, they had enthusiastic response, but they had difficulty to arrange the agenda of the training because various reasons, such as, having no free time because of village officials meeting, or doing their fields and family business. However, I did not give up. To reassure them, I kept in contact and suggested that the activities would be held at the nearest place, even though I had to travel further. Finally, computer training on Word, Excel and Powerpoint went well, even though only some of the village officials participated plus a midwife who took part in it.

Besides having computer training, I also intensely communicated with the community about the economic efforts done by the people using village natural resources, one of which was seaweed cultivation and swallow nests. From this dialogue I discovered new things about the potency of my village and the obstacles faced by the people to develop seaweed and swallow nests. It is normal because in reality the human resources in the village is very limited, but actually they have eagerness to learn.

As a student, I felt satisfied and proud when I had a chance to share my knowledge to village officials and they learned it enthusiastically. I started to realize and felt sad because many young people from my village who were studying in colleges, they did nothing during their home return in campus break. They did not use their time to transfer their knowledge to their community. Actually the village officials expected positive contribution from the students who study in different place to build their villages.

Hopefully my activities will be useful and the quality of village officials will be improved, especially to operate computers to serve the community and it will awake students’ awareness to serve the community through knowledge transfer for mutual development.