Lekdis Nusantara was founded in 2000 and it operates in private schools, learning centres in remote villages and other rural areas in Indonesia.
Its mission is to strengthen the community through long-term empowerment for children and youth, and it does so by providing equal access to quality education. As the foundation believes in the value of education to uplift livelihoods, its multi-stakeholder approach encourages didactic workshops and further activities that nurture sustainable, critical thinking and promote active participation.
Moreover, its network-based work allows the organisation to reach out to numerous beneficiaries; Students and teachers from private schools and public schools or colleges; Children of orphanages and institutions for underprivileged children, children with special needs and children living in rural areas; underprivileged communities and remote communities; various civic organizations including youth organizations; educators and observers of education, as well as researchers; members of government and representatives of national institutions and similar of the like.
Our Partnership
The likeminded approach of Lekdis Nusantara in relation to providing quality education and youth empowerment has fostered a long-lasting partnership with Aflatoun since 2009. The partnership has pushed forth dynamic learning environments, fostering social and financial education with diverse, child-centred, learning-by-doing methods.
With minimal financial literacy curricula in Indonesia’s national educational system, Lekdis Nusantara implements our diverse Aflatot, Aflatoun, Aflateen and other curricula to educate and empower children and young adults on life skills and financial literacy, building community resilience and better job prospects for marginalised communities.
Aflatoun, for example, gives children the opportunity to learn how to plan, budget, and learn how to save and spend with a sense of responsibility. The curriculum promotes a holistic approach to saving and continuously develops a saving culture or habit; that means children are not only motivated to save money but also to save natural resources such as water, electricity, paper, and the like.
In order to increase the creativity, productivity of Aflatoun club members and as a form of life skills training, the foundation routinely provides crafting workshops, one of which is making written batik, crafts from used plastics, crafts from seashells, wood carving, and other crafts according to the potential of the area where the Aflateen club is located. The results of these crafts are offered to Aflatoun partners both at home and abroad. Moreover, they are often sold at school fairs for the common savings of the clubs. To motivate children’s creativity and craftsmanship, Lekdis conducted a “Business Plan Proposal Competition” for the students. The prizes from this competition allow Aflateen students to increase their production and sales.
Other Aflateen projects implemented by Lekdis have also included designing budget plans and financial goals, as well as social and financial business lessons, like how to start, design, and run an entrepreneurship business, programme management, and making proposals. To strengthen entrepreneurial and employability skills, starting in 2015, Aflateen activities were developed in the form of ‘Teen Business Camp’ for children from secondary schools and universities and they continue to foster environmental awareness amongst the youth.
Over 120.000 children empowered with Social and Financial Education
Lekdis Nusantara has been implementing Aflatoun’s school-based programme of Child Social and Financial Education in east Java, west Nusa Tenggara and south Sulawesi reaching 14 districts, 182 teachers and 5895 children in 91 schools by the end of 2010.
By March 2015 Lekdis expanded to 57 districts in 9 provinces, reaching 128,903 children and young people with 3,311 teachers in 437 schools.
From 2016 to 2020 Lekdis kept maintaining programme implementation for the existing schools in the network.
The partnership keeps growing with the current project in sensitive Global Citizenship and Life Skills Education for Youth in Indonesia that covers three pilot provinces (West Kalimantan, East Nusa Tenggara & West Sulawesi) in cooperation with Directorate of Early Childhood Education, Elementary Education, and Secondary Education Ministry of Education and Culture of Republic of Indonesia. Alongside this project, the foundation is also part of more fruitful projects like the project funded and supported by Reach Out to Asia (ROTA) of Education Above All Foundation (EAA) in 3 provinces with the aim to reach 12,000 young people aged from 14-19 from 2021 until 2024.
“We have reached beyond the project target in term of number and figures, but Lekdis committed to improve and develop the programme as well as reach more teachers, stakeholders, students, children and youth on board as stated by Aflatoun CEO to scale up, scale deep and scale wide.
Lekdis will work more closely with the Education Office in provincial and district levels to encourage them to replicate the Aflateen+ programme in their respective areas and adopt them into their educational policy to further provide financial literacy”