Alternative education for children program was firstly aiming at providing media for children to recovering children’s mental and creativity after long time of conflict and Tsunami. Education was done throug learning traditional dancings, painting and literacy program for dropout students. After peace agreement and public schools refunctioning, SHEEP then more focused on education advocacy for accessible education for shool-aged children.
Education as people’s basic right was not yet accessible, especially in East Aceh. According to government, there are 58 thousands drop-out students and about 7,900 children do not go to school.
Above condition became main consideration of SHEEP to be more focused on children accompaniment through forming Liberation School in Tampor Paloh village. This accompaniment process was going along with people awareness building, that education should not be done in formal ways (in good buildings, wearing uniform, expensive books, etc), but more importantly emphasis on creativity development, capacity development, and high adaptability toward existence contition. Those aspecst were very important to build children’s character and became more critical toward social condition, health and their sustainable environment.
Strategy
Focus changing of education program from providing a media for children’s mental recovery into education advocacy toward accessible education for children required intensive efforts of SHEEP to the government and its organizing process. Those strategies were achieved with some following activities:
| - | Awareness movement amongst parents was done in order to convice that children education is very important. Therefore, the parents would support and motivate their children to study. |
| - | Children education not should be done in formal ways (regular school), but more importantly on critical awareness toward social condition and what they could do to improve the existence condition. |
| - | SHEEP intensively discussed with Education Department about the existence of Liberation School, and asked them to legalize it and support its education program which innitiated by the people. |
| - | On its accompaniment process, SHEEP emphasised the importance of people participation and contribution to sustain the education program, such as: people contribution on class building construction, providing land for the school, providing logistic and equipment support either for students or teachers. |
