Realizing Marta’s Dream of Going Back to School

The current Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in many things that normally cannot be carried out, including school activities. This is also felt by Marta, one of the children affected by the Covid-19 Pandemic, who is currently in elementary school at one of Wahana Visi Indonesia’s (WVI) assisted schools in the Landak Area Program.

Marta explained that she missed hanging out with her friends again to enjoy face-to-face school. However, with the current pandemic situation, it is not easy to make it happen. Moreover, many things need to be prepared from various aspects such as security to be protected from exposure to Covid-19.

Since April 2021, the central government itself has coordinated the need for more optimal access to education by allowing schools to reopen with conditions for mapping the spread of the Covid-19 virus with medium or low risk and school readiness to meet local facilities, infrastructure, and capacities that support child safety during a Limited Face-to-face Meeting.

However, the implementation of this policy still cannot be considered optimal because schools have not disciplined complied with the health protocol, plus there is no Covid-19 task force that has contributed. With this condition, WVI sees that it is necessary to accelerate the performance of service providers in preparing all schools so that when the risk of virus exposure has decreased, schools can immediately organize limited face-to-face learning.

This effort was then targeted through the Citizen Voice and Action approach by selecting 3 schools as sampling, one of which was the school where Marta studied.

Marta as a student was also given the opportunity to evaluate the services provided by the school.

“I want water, toilet cleaners, hand soap, lights, so I’m healthy while at school,” said Marta.

As a result, the facilitator conveyed the voices of Marta and other children in a limited face-to-face dialogue attended by the Development Planning Agency at Sub-National Level (Bappeda), Agency, and other community leaders.

After approximately one month of implementation, finally, Marta’s school has cleaned up and fulfilled the lack of local infrastructure and capacity to be on standby during the Covid-19 Pandemic.

Not only schools, but parents also contribute to providing certain goods for their children. All classes and school hallways have now successfully applied the Health protocol and collaborated with the Committee and Public Health Center to form the Covid-19 Task Force team.

“Now at my school, there is always hand soap and tissue, the toilets are now bright and clean, there are also toilet cleaners. I now feel safe at school,” concluded Marta.

Written by: Fenny Samosir, TP Coordinator of Area Program Landak Wahana Visi Indonesia
Translated by: Klaudia Mawuntu, Intern Wahana Visi Indonesia