Participants of Tanoto Foundation’s 2019 TELADAN program have started the first of the series of leadership development training sessions which they will be attending this year.

TELADAN (Teaching Leadership, Advancing the Nations) is a program initiated by Tanoto Foundation to support Indonesia’s younger generation to become future leaders who will have positive impact on their environment.

The 2019 TELADAN participants attended their first basic leadership training on February 17 to 27 in Bogor, West Java. The training was facilitated by Aethra Learning Center.

As part of their training to become leaders in their wider community, the Tanoto Scholars learned about self-management, how to recognise their strengths and develop them. The scholars also learned about teamwork and effective communication, financial planning and the significance of setting personal goals.

“Tanoto Scholars should aspire towards becoming leaders. The purpose of life is greater than life itself. With this training, we hope that Tanoto Scholars will set life goals to become capable and responsible future leaders,” said Satrijo Tanudjojo, CEO of Global Tanoto Foundation.

Tanoto Scholars are encouraged to adopt values practiced by the founders of Tanoto Foundation, Sukanto Tanoto and Tinah Bingei Tanoto, including hard work, lifelong learning, and care for their community.

“From this training, I was able to recognise positive things about myself. I was also able to establish networks with my fellow Tanoto Scholars from all over Indonesia,” said Michael Hutahaean, Tanoto Scholar from the Bandung Institute of Technology.

Gracella Jovita, another scholar from the University of Indonesia, said the training provided guidance on the skills she should develop to become a potential leader.

Another scholar, Moudy Alveria Paramitha of Andalas University, also expressed pleasure at participating in the training.

“Not only did I receive leadership training in a fun way, I have a better understanding now of the skills and values we should master to become a leader,” she said.

After their first year in TELADAN, the participants will receive personal development training in their second year, career development and global insights in their third year, and training in personal branding in their fourth year.

Tanoto Foundation will also extend career and leadership support to TELADAN participants after they graduate university.

Andereas Nugraha has experienced an admirable career so far. The former Tanoto Scholar went from having a job at Indonesia’s National Development Planning Agency in 2014, to joining the ASEAN Secretariat Political and Security Directorate office in 2017, where he still works.

He became a Tanoto Foundation scholarship recipient in 2008 when he was studying International Relations at the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences at Gadjah Mada University (UGM).

However, Andereas’ love for international relations between countries started when he was just a young boy in the fourth grade in 2000.

At the time, Andereas was chosen as the ambassador from Indonesia to attend the International Children Symposium in Orlando, Florida in the United States.

Andereas was chosen because of his efforts to establish a library at home with his father, who was a teacher. Living in a village with extremely limited access to reading materials, he felt fortunate because his father often tried to source books for him to read and collect, and also share them with other children in the village.

“At that time, it was unusual for people who lived in the village to even dare to dream of having a career in an international setting. But attending that symposium motivated me, and that’s why I chose to study International Relations,” he shared.

The optimistic choice turned out to be the right one, because Andereas received various opportunities at university to hone his skills and realise his potential, including joining the Model United Nations in the Hague, Netherlands and Beijing, China. He also became an exchange student at the prestigious National University of Singapore in 2010.

In 2014, Andereas also continued his studies, taking up a Master of Arts (Strategic Studies) and Master of Diplomacy at the Australian National University. There, he majored in defense – the area he is currently working in at the ASEAN Secretariat.

“If you want to pursue an international career, become an expert at the national level first because it is only from here that people will know you are a valuable asset. Let’s not have an incredible career at the international level and yet not know anything about Indonesia,” Andereas advised.

People who enter Tri Heni Endang Rachma Pamiluwati’s fourth-grade class at SDN 25 Pekanbaru in Riau might be confused at first – there are always objects which look out of place in her classroom.

One day, it is rice, sugar, flour and measuring scales. On another day, you might see caterpillars, tadpoles and butterflies.

Getting her students to bring these unusual objects to class is all part of the teacher’s efforts to encourage them to learn actively – the rice, sugar, flour and measuring scales are meant to teach the students about lengths and weights, for example.

As a Regional Facilitator for Tanoto Foundation’s PINTAR program which aims to improve the quality of learning in Pekanbaru, Tri Heni rarely runs out of ideas for creative lessons in the classroom, especially after she has attended a MIKiR training session.

Run by Tanoto Foundation, MIKiR emphasizes the four principles of ‘Experiencing and observing, Interacting, Communicating and Reflecting’ during creative lesson planning.

MIKiR is part of the PINTAR program campaign in supporting active learning in the class. The expected results is students have more critical thinking skills about the lesson they received.

“The MIKiR method lets teachers teach lessons while the children experience and observe. After this, the children deliver the results of their observations, by reflecting with their friends,” said Tri Heni.

The method makes the learning process more focused and also provides a unique and memorable experience for the teacher and students.

As an example, to make learning about metamorphosis more interesting, Tri Heni asks her students to observe caterpillars and frog eggs over five days.

By the end of the five-day observation period, some of the students did not want to take the animals home because they had changed into other animals, Tri Heni says.

“The caterpillars had changed into butterflies after emerging from cocoons. Meanwhile, the eggs which had been originally mistaken for frog eggs turned out to be mosquito eggs, and larva hatched from them instead of tadpoles. The students learned a lot about metamorphosis from these observations,” she said.

Tri Heni says the students in his class have become much more enthusiastic to learn since he began applying the MIKiR method in class.

More importantly, their capabilities to understand subjects have become a lot better, which are the best assets for learning new subjects, Tri Heni says.

“I don’t have any unusual grand ambitions – I want to be a teacher who produces extraordinary students,” she says.

One of the PINTAR program effort to encourage teacher implementing the active learning is disseminate this good practices to other schools around so other teachers can imitate or develop their own learning creativity in classroom.