Yogyakarta, June 18th 2020—Politics and Government Student Corps (Korps Mahasiswa Politik dan Pemerintahan/KOMAP) held an event called Sosmas Ceria as one of their projects. This first Sosmas Ceria presented a speaker from Gajahwong School, Faiz Fakhruddin. It brought a theme to discuss about “Alternative Education in the Middle of the Pandemic”. Faiz gave an illustration about the dynamic conditions that were faced by Gajahwong School in their learning activities in the middle of this pandemic.
At first, Gajahwong School was built because of the initiative from the buskers in Yogyakarta who concerned in solving the group problems. From here, the motivation boost to keep learning together everyday produced a good result. The buskers became more critical in responding the current issues which was happening.
In responding to that, Gajahwong School also had a priority to provide an educational playroom for the children. Before there was a shifting from offline to online activities, Gajahwong School could do the learning processes like an ‘old normal’. But, since there was a pandemic, the learning processes were done by adjusting the curriculum with the current conditions. To the audience, Faiz explained that Gajahwong School had made a learning process scenario with a method called Guru Terbang (The Flying Teacher). The teachers will teach the students directly by going to house by house. This method had been evaluated and there will be smaller groups containing two to three people in the learning process.
According to Faiz, this pandemic gave a difficult situation in the learning process of the Gajahwong School. There were many educational programs that should be changed in responding to this pandemic. As for the programs that faced the difficult situation were Bank Sampah (Garbage Bank), Koperasi Sekolah Gajahwong (Gajahwong School Cooperative), Goat and Sheep Farm, the Garden, Facilitation and Media Campaign, and the T-shirt Selling program. In facing these difficulties, the Gajahwong School got some alternative solutions such as online bazaar through the Instagram. Other than that, to maximize the fruits and vegetables production, the Gajahwong School also held an event called Vegetables Donor where the vegetables were shared to the urban community.
This Vegetables Donor program already in its fifth harvest stage. The donation in the form of giving the vegetables to the public community kitchens in several locations, such as Sarkem, Gelapan, Ledhok Timoho, Parangtritis, and Ledhok Sukangan. Other than shifting the programs, Gajahwong School also opened for any collaborations with the external parties. In this case, Gajahwong School also indicated that it was a place to learn for everyone. As stated by Faiz, Gajahwong School had done several collaborations from a short term collaborations, usually with the college students, to the long term collaborations with the universities from Indonesia and the foreign universities.
Faiz also said that they had done alternative efforts to do the educational process in Gajahwong School, by giving the children an education related to the understanding about coronavirus. The Gajahwong School’s involvement in responding to the COVID-19 had done by maximizing the socialization about coronavirus and other related things to the children. Faiz also explained that in this new normal era, Gajahwong School would organize the curriculum and academic calendar immediately by adjusting to this condition. The curriculum in Gajahwong School was a mix curriculum that referred to the Indonesian curriculum. The curriculum must be suitable for the visions that were brought by the Gajahwong School. As for the closing of this Sosmas Ceria, Faiz stated his hope for Gajahwong School. He hoped Gajahwong School could optimize their educational qualities for the children.