Forty-four students from 11 junior high schools in remote areas in Bali appeared enthusiastic as they were about to begin a three-day junior journalist program staring on Wednesday in Werdhapura Hotel in Sanur.

The program, jointly organized by The Australian Government Partnership and The Jakarta Post Foundation, aims to increase media literacy among youth in Bali. The program also provides training to improve students’ writing and reading skills.

“Australia is a major supporter of Indonesia’s education sector and of a democratic, tolerant and open civil society,” said Jacqui De Lacy, AusAID senior representative.

“We are proud to support The Jakarta Post Foundation’s program to train students from 11 schools that Australia funds in Bali,” De Lacy said.

“This program will provide these students with writing, reading and analytical skills as well as media literacy,” she added.

Among the participating schools are SMP 4 junior high school in Marga and SMPN 5 Baturiti in Tabanan regency, SMPN 3 Ubud in Gianyar, SMPN 3 Rendang, SMPN 5 Kubu, SMPN Alas Angker and SMPN Amlapura in Karangasem.

Other participating schools included SMPN 5 Depeha, SMPN 5 Busung Biu and SMPN 7 Kintamani. All of these schools are located far from Bali’s capital city of Denpasar.

Yulia Herawati, executive director of the Jakarta Post Foundation, said the young journalist program was part of the foundation’s education program for Indonesian youth.

The program has a significant role to play in helping young people develop their writing and reading skills as well as select, evaluate and control the huge amounts of information delivered by mass media.

“We all know that today’s students and young people live in an information technology and entertainment era. The influence of media such as television, films, videos, magazines, computer games and popular music has been so immense,” Yulia said.

“Therefore, it is important that starting from primary grades, students are now required to learn to use media resources in critical and thoughtful ways.

“Media literacy is very important in building a strong civil society and a democratic nation.”

The foundation’s young journalist program has reached out to 30,000 school students from junior high to university students across Indonesia.

Kadek Erniwati, a student of SMPN 6 Amlapura in Karangasem, East Bali, said she was delighted to take part in the program.

“Now I know how a newspaper is produced. I think it would be cool to be a journalist,” Erniwati said.

I Putu Darsana, a participant from SMPN 5 Kubu, also in Karangasem, said he liked reading newspapers and wanted to learn how to write an article.

“But, we don’t have money to buy a newspaper or a magazine. More importantly, our location is so remote,” I Putu said.

Khoeroh Maslukah, a teacher from Kubu, and I Ketut Koroh Wijaya, a teacher from Seraya School, said the journalistic program was important to open the minds of their students to the importance of education.

“It *the training* will increase the interest of students to read, write and learn new things. Many young people in our villages have to drop out of school because of financial and social problems,” Wijaya said.

Source: Jakarta Post