Great organization in Indonesia!
Agenkultur born in a hysterical space of billboards among the massive icons of globalization and in the crowd of local culture stagnancy. It grew up among the fast food industry, phantasm of high class society welfare injected by the soap opera business and our culture of consumption.
Agenkultur realizes that the greatest threat for the world today is not dull-haired people or celebrities having affair as shown on TV screen. Among us is the reality, that many children have dropped out from schools to be stranded on the street and the slum on the edge of the global economic highway.
Agenkultur is an independent institute, founded by a group of common people, who have committed to make a big change and improving the social life, environment and culture by working collectively in profound activities within social interactions based on sense of care and equality.
Agenkultur does not mean ‘you’ and ‘me’, but a unity of ‘Us’ ; a unity of individuals desiring to fill in our lives merely by taking even the least role in any aspect of lives for the sake of changes.
Agenkultur is a social organization that focusing on community development, founded in 2003. Agenkultur began from a social activity, named Pusat Kegiatan Belajar Masyarakat (PKBM) Malacca (The Center for Community Learning Acitivities). The Center For Community Learning Activities, as part of Division of Public Education in Agenkultur, holds a free/subsidized education program equal to junior and high school for drop out students, empowerment education for mothers or households, and life-skills education for youth.
During the first run of activities, this public education division helds a life-skills education program around the waste disposal area in Kiapang Palmerah, West Jakarta, for households mothers such as in the skill of sewing, knitting and cooking as many as 50 mothers, mostly those of home industry workers of paper bags and also peddlers. Seeing the fact that in this area many school-aged children have dropped out of their schools due to the economic conditions of their families, PKBM Malacca then opened a free/subsidized non-formal education program such as Paket B (equal to junior school) and Paket C (equal to High school). This non-formal education seems to be suited with their conditions, since the program is practically flexible that could manage the constraints caused by their economic conditions, time and facilities.
Due to the fact that more and more people were interested in this educational programs, the capacity of class/study room had not been adequate to accommodate the students. As a way to overcome the situation, Agenkultur rents a building at Kelurahan Kota Bambu Selatan as the secretariat, and cooperate with the local community leaders to use the multipurpose room in the district office as the class room. Since year 2005, The Public Education Division of Agenkultur has been using the multipurpose room in Kelurahan Kota Bambu Selatan as the Education Center of the society. Agenkultur has also opened a Public Library as the Information Center for the community.
In year 2007, The Public Education Division of Agenkultur expand its program to Tanggerang – Banten, located in Kampung Babakan, Kelurahan Binong. This expansion is made considering the high number of drop-outs and school-aged children who can’t get any proper education in the area. Agenkultur, then taken the initiative to build an open space for the development of education, culture and business units community program. In the upcoming days, this open space will also be facilitated with book and film library with radio station for the community. To this day, Agenkultur and its non-formal education program has taught and facilitating the education for as many as 700 people. Most of the alumnae of the institute have worked in different fields of works and been recruited by different factories or home industries, some of them even continue their studies to universities.
Besides the educational programs, Agenkultur has also develops its activities in cultural and environmental programs, performing some creative campaign that invite and encourage public to have empathy for sociocultural issues and act critically towards globalization and consumerism.
