Indonesian Gotong Royong (Mutual Assistance), Traditional Communal work for the community

A Project Prototype by Siska Nelson

not published

Students will immerse themselves in eastern culture of working together in a community. In Indonesia the idea of social interaction is collective, consensual and cooperative. Many key terms in Indonesian nature of society related to this ideological basis, one of them is Gotong royong. Gotong royong in literal meaning is “mutual assistance”. Gotong Royong is seen as an obligation of individual towards society. The idea of Gotong royong is sharing of burdens between the member of community. This interaction can develop towards meaningful long lasting friendships between the members of community and build trust. A gotong royong community would shared responsibility and prevent conflict in between the community members. It's a social solidarity in society within smaller bubbles of community. Gotong royong can happen in many social activities such as Kerja Bakti or traditional communal work (cooperative labor) to clean the environment in the neighborhood. Another example in Gotong Royong is the culture of helping the neighbor who will hold a wedding party (or other types of gatherings), by helping them with funds, food or even labor. After time, this particular neighbor will hold the same responsibility towards other members of the community and do the same thing, which means to provide help to someone in need. Many other examples can be mentioned in this social interaction to include, cleaning the neighborhood, building houses, irrigation, clearing fields, etc. This act of communal labor also have been done by military forces to help out disasters affected areas or for celebrating important day such as independence day, heroes day, etc. in their community.

In this project, students will have to create a list kerja bakti or gotong royong  activities that they can think of. The list then should be  posted in http://www.kaskus.co.id/ or https://numpta.com/ or http://idws.id/ , these are indonesian forums where they can post a thread and ask local indonesian of what they think about the list and ask indonesians if the activities on the list is can be considered as a form of kerja bakti as their end product. The result should be documented and post it in the students blog. In the long run they may choose from the list of the activities that was discussed that is considered as gotong royong and launch it as their perpetual new project.

Overview files comments

Preparing for the Project

Discussion of Culture

Listening to a song

Launching the Project

Brainstorming of ideas

Discussion of Pay it Forward culture

Assessment

Tasks not specified.

Implementation Info

Implementation information not specified.

Preparing for the Project

Discussion of Culture

Provide students with a short video of collectivist culture vs individualist culture differences in L1

video: collectivist vs. individualist culture

From the video provided student should discuss about collectivist vs. individualist

 

Task Type:
need to know
Task Focus:
content
Technology Tips:

click on the hyperlink

Potential Hurdles:

Lack of understanding about the difference of collectivist and individualist culture.

Listening to a song

Watch and listen to this Song, ask student about the general idea of what they hear and what this activity talk about. The song will have subtitles and the speech will be slow.

 

Task Type:
need to know
Task Focus:
content
Potential Hurdles:

The choice of the words in song might be to advanced

Launching the Project

Brainstorming of ideas

  1. Ask students if they have volunteered in the community and what they think about it (ask if they agree or disagree that someone have to volunteer their time at some point in their life, whether its for the local humanity organization or for an event) this can be done by raising hands or using stickies and put it in one place

  2. Brainstorm in answergarden.com about:

    1. What is considered as community work activities and things you can do for your neighbor or in the neighborhood.

    2. People, person or organization you can help

    3. Places to do community work

  3. Collect the answer and create a vocabulary list from the answer

  4. Vocabulary Topics needed: Environment, society, Cooperation, neighborhood social interaction, Cooperation.

Task Type:
scaffolding
Task Focus:
interaction

Discussion of Pay it Forward culture

Students will have to decide whether Pay-it-Forward culture can be categorized as collectivist culture or individualist culture.

Students have to get the discussion going and give reasoning behind it

The video is here

Task Type:
driving question
Task Focus:
interaction

Managing the Project

TASK 1

gotong royong

Task Type:
scaffolding
Task Focus:
content

Assessment

Implementation Info

Comments

Re: Indonesian Gotong Royong (Mutual Assistance), Traditional Communal work in the neighborhood - Kerja Bakti. Jun 30 2016
by Siska Nelson

Type what you see and whether you think this might be related to your job