Rencana Kegiatan Oase Intim Tahun 2008

Background

GKSB is a synod organisation of protestant congregations formerly belong to GTM. Hence both churches have the same background of Dutch missionary ZCGK. GKSB congregations are mainly among the To Kalumpang (a sub Torajan ethnic) at hinterland of Mamuju regency of the (newly founded) West Sulawesi Province.But some congregations are in Mamuju and Makassar among the To Kalumpang migrants. The number are 18,000 people under ministerial care of only about 40 pastors. The congregations were poorly educated in Christians education, children and youth as well. Most of the ministers got limited theological training, and have to serve some congregations in a relative wide area. Some congregations do not have skilled persons to teach Sunday school or catechism class. Some do with curricula different from one place to place.

Objectives

Cooperation with Oase is a collaboration to provide a relative contextual curricula for both Sunday school and catechism, and the same time empowers some ministers and other church workers on the subjects.

Procedures

To attain these double objectives, Oase and GKSB agreed to set up a teamwork from both side. The team members from GKSB will be regarded as the future trainers in the church. The team will work together to provide topics as in a curriculum outline arrangement, then conduct a series of monthly study case workshops on the topics.

[Prior to the study case workshops, a workshop on Christian education will be organised to equip the team with competencies in curriculum basics. This workshop of Christian Education Curriculum Training will be attended by team members from the two churches, GKSS and GKSB, and hopefully also from GKST; and will be facilitated by Christian Education expert such as Dr Ery Hutabarat-Lebang. ]

These workshops will be conducted in different places, so to access different people and contexts. Eventually the workshops will be produced materials and methods for Sunday school teaching, and catechism as well.

Final Draft & Evaluation

The members of the team were divided to two groups of Sunday school and of Catechism. They are respectively responsible for drawing the final draft from the workshops. After the final draft, there will be a meeting for Evaluation. The team work with some pastors and teachers will be invited to evaluate the final draft.

Schedule

A whole day meeting on 4 July 2007 in Mamuju has been done to clarify the procedures and identify the topics (needs assessment) for both curriculum of Sunday school and Catechism. The next steps are the workshops, schedule as follows:

Date Program Place Notes

January 2007 Basics of Christian Education curriculum Makassar Teams of GKSB and of GKSS

February 2008 Case study 1 Mamuju Team of GKSB

March 2008 Case study 2 Mamuju

April 2008 Case study 3 Makassar

May 2008 Case study 4 Mamuju

June 2007 Case study 5 Galumpang

July 2008 Final Drafting Mamuju

August 2008 Evaluation Mamuju

Background

GKSS is a synod organisation of protestant congregations among the Bugis and Makassar in South Sulawesi founded by missionary works of Dutch GKN and of Indische Kerk (the Netherlans Indie Protestant Church). In the course of history, members from outside outnumbered the Bugis-Makassar ethnic groups. Recent statistic counter about 4,000 members. Congregations founded in Soppeng, Gowa, Selayar, Pangkep, Maros regencies and Makassar municipality. Some congregations are fading out because most of the young generation migrated to the cities or other places, left only the older. Sunday school and catechism class are well organised but with different curricula from place to place.

Objectives

Cooperation with Oase is of provide a relative contextual curricula for both Sunday school and catechism, and the same time empowers some ministers and other church workers on the subjects.

Procedures

To attain these double objectives, Oase and GKSB agree to set up a teamwork from both side. The team members from GKSB will be regarded as the future trainers in the church. The team will work together to provide topics as in a curriculum outline arrangement, then conduct a series of monthly study case workshops on the topics.

[Prior to the study case workshops, a workshop on Christian education will be organised to equip the team with competencies in curriculum basics. This workshop of Christian Education Curriculum Training will be attended by team members from the two churches, GKSS and GKSB, and hopefully also from GKST; and will be facilitated by Christian Education expert such as Dr Ery Hutabarat-Lebang. ]

These workshops will be conducted in different places, so to access different people and contexts. Eventually the workshops will be produced materials and methods for Sunday school teaching, and catechism as well.

Final Draft

The members of the team were divided to two groups of Sunday school and of Catechism. They are respectively responsible for drawing the final draft from the workshops.

Schedule

A whole day meeting on 20 June 2007 and 20 July in Makassar has been done to clarify the procedures and identify the topics (needs assessment) for both curriculum of Sunday school and Catechism. The next steps are the workshops, scheduled as follows:

Date Program Place Notes

January 2007 Basics of Christian Education curriculum Makassar Together with team of GKSB

Sept 2008 Case study 1 Makassar Team of GKSS

Oct 2008 Case study 2 Maros

Nov 2008 Case study 3 Soppeng

Dec 2008 Case study 4 Gowa

Jan 2009 Case study 5 Pangkep

Feb 2009 Final Drafting Makassar

March 2009 Evaluation Makassar

III. Programs on Christian Women Voter Education (South and West Sulawesi)

Background

Voter Education is needed in recent Indonesian process towards better democracy. Most of NGOs active in democratic advocation and empowerment focus on the whole society or on interfaith community. Oase will focus on Christian woman voter education. This challenging concern will be addressed in cooperation with Christian women organisations, such as PWKI, Biro Wanita PGIW, and others.

South Sulawesi governor and his deputy election process just finished last week. It was interesting to observe how certain circle of Christian women informed each other of the candidate couples and who should be better than the other and therefore why should be supported. Some recent provincial and regent elections were ended up in controversies and conflicts. They were caused by immature or less informed (less educated) voters manipulated emotionally or primordially by self political interests.

Voter education is also relevant as some elections at regency (and provincial) levels will due in the year 2008 and 2009, culminated in presidential election in 2009.

Objectives

Christian (women) voters should be free from mere emotional or primordial sentiments of that kind. A voters education program equips the voter of basic knowledge of formal democratic procedures in the country, of civil rights, but also of negative tactics and strategies common in the political campaigns. Beside addressing these topics, Oase will also focus on Christian view on power and politic, and of Indonesian socio-historical contexts of recent development. Christian leadership is also an option for the training.

Methods

Relevant resource persons will be employed to empower woman participants on a whole day workshop. Participant will be invited from Christian and church women organisers, and youth or students women as well. They will be educated in three-days workshop of TOT program. Four to six workshops will be organised in Makassar, Mamuju, Polewali, Toraja, and if possible also in Palopo and Masamba.

Background and Objectives

Indonesian history of post-Suharto regime – the Reformation era – is regarded as a difficult process towards genuine socio-political democracy. Depolitisation of military, reopen the channels for people political aspirations, commitment to human rights, more serious lawsuit against corruptors, eliminate old regime system and power influences, government decentralisation, and direct election system are among the main features of reformation process. But it was not a quick and easy process. The road to Indonesian democracy is hampered, notably by people political illiterate. Successive regimes after Indonesian independence never educated the people politically, but rather manipulated or exploited them to strengthen their power interets. People, therefore, remain passive objects in the hand of their political patrons. Emotional and primordial sentiments, violence, or money politics became common phenomena in Indonesian politics. Other problems is the hijacking of decentralisation system to support local political dissents, such as regionalism or Islamic (and may be Christian/Hinduism also) political agenda.

These phenomena should be changed through political educations. Oase is going to participate in these venture either by conducting a series of local socio-political case studies or by organising some workshops.

The main objectives are:

(1) to enlight people of their local socio-political conditions to discern chances and threats of democracy;

(2) to study movements of local autonomy (decentralisation) and its religiously tainted regulations (perda) with local socio-political conflicts, etc. and

(3) to develop Christian perspectives on supporting a good governance at local, regional and national levels.

To have a more clear focus of this program, the first step should be an assessment workshop to study recent Indonesian local socio-political contexts and Christian participation in democracy. With certain method such as SWOT and/or case analysis, this workshop hopefully will be able to identify some focus for Oase socio-political empowerment programs. The assessment workshop will gathered 30-40 representatives of stakeholders from the regions/regencies, partners, academicians / experts, etc.

The importance of this assessment workshop is also justified by a need of comprehensive evaluation of Church and Christian political participation in the so called Reformation movement of the post-New Order era. [Study materials and the findings of this workshop will be published as an information documents for churches and christian institutions. (Publication cost (estimated 65 - 75,000,000) will be treated as another program of Oase].

Time and Venue

Time: the Assessment Workshop sCheduled on the first or second week of March 2008.

Venue: Oase is based in Makassar and concentrate its ministry in Eastern Indonesia. Some places in the area, such as Ambon, Kupang, Bali, or Toraja can be relevant option for the venue of the workshop. But in terms of relative easy access and financial matter, it seem that Makassar will be the proper choice.

Organising Committee:

1. Zakaria Ngelow, 2. Julianus Mojau, 3. John Campbell-Nelson,

4. Christine Hutubessy, 5. Jean Wattimena, 6. Fietje Pelupessy,

7. Jaspert Slob, 8. Marten Manggeng, 9. Kalvin Kalambo

Topics

The Assessment Workshop will be concentrated to study some topics, such as:

- Decentralisation policy and the local autonomy movement

- Perda shari’a cases

- Good governance at local and national level

- Experiences of NGO at local community

- Church and politics at local and regional

- etc

First Workshop: on Mamasa Regency

While waiting for more clear mapping of problems by the assessment workshop, another workshop on Mamasa regency can be scheduled 3 days on October 2008. The main focus will be the empowerment of church pastors and leaders on regent direct election matters. This will include TOT voter education and Christian perspective on good governance.

Good governance is understood as a set of eight major characteristics of: participation, rule of law, transparency, responsiveness, consensus orientation, equity and inclusiveness, effectiveness and efficiency accountability. These characteristics assure that corruption is minimized, the views of minorities are taken into account and that the voices of the most vulnerable in society are heard in decision-making.