Peace Corps & MEC

In Indonesia there are two types of public schools students can choose from. One is run by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research and Technology and the other by the Ministry of Religious Affairs. There are elementary, middle, and high schools that are public under both ministries.

Peace Corps assigns volunteers to both types of schools and tries to have about an even number of PCVs at both types. Although that often depends on a myriad of considerations, including volunteer preference, site requirements, location, etc. I was placed in a school under the Ministry of Religious Affairs, which are called Madrasahs. The Ministry has a program that is partnered with Peace Corps. This program is called Madrasah English Community (MEC) and it is a program where once a month two volunteers go to another madrasah school that does not have a volunteer and does an event in english about a certain topic. This event is hybrid and madrasahs from around Indonesia can join the zoom and watch the program. There are currently 6 PCVs at madrasahs so once a month two of them go to a different place.

I have now gone to my first event and it was located in Madura at MTSN 3 Pamekasan. Our topic for this event was "Independence Day Special "American Perspective on Celebrating Freedom."" We chose this topic because the event was on August 20th and Indonesia has its Independence Day on August 17th so it was perfect timing to talk about the different and same ways the two countries celebrate independence day.

The event was interesting and the students both in person and online seemed engaged. Before the actual presentation, the school put on some performances like dancing, weapon dancing, singing, story telling and more. This was very fun to watch and see the differences and similaries between dance preformances in East and West Java.