Written by: Habibah Jazila

It only one week left from the one month full of Summer School. During the program I kept thinking how I can put my learning from this summer school into actions, how the readings required can increase the effectiveness of my human rights work. It reminds me of Pak Zainal’s warning at the Indonesian’s participant meeting before the summer school started. I do remember he said that this summer school basically is an academic program, so for those who are working in NGOs probably should not have the expectations that this is going to be training program that usually work more on developing skills etc, instead, this program will work more on theories. So, for people like me, who is used to have participatory training models rather than the expert model of lecturing, it’s quite hard to have some lectures with quite difficult reading materials for one month.

Apart from my struggle with all readings, for me, what makes this program is special is because it tries to combine academic work with professional skills---building the bridge between academicians and practitioners. After having read the reader and discussions in the class, I can say that to some extend the academicians help the practitioners to look at the problems existing more systematically. So, in this sense, I look at their analysis as a tool to look at the problem existing more clearly, so it help the practitioners to design and decide the actions they are going to take as well as to evaluate their works. One important reflection from this summer school for me is that the fact that there was very limited time to give attention to the theories—working on some theoretical based readings. Maybe it’s true that sometimes we, as an activist or practitioners, are too busy with the advocacy works, ignoring the theoretical ones, since there are very often too many problems need to be responded immediately. Another important reflection is I should write more often; off course not only write reports, haha. By writing more often, we can share the works we are doing, analyzing our works, as well as our self reflection on the works, what we have achieved, which parts need to be improved, why certain works are less effective, etc.

So, finally, how we can make our learning during the summers school valuable?, the answer is putting the learning into actions, and to begin with we all have already had plans on that by designing a workshop we will conduct after leaving the summer school. Of course the workshop is only one small thing, a starting point of our never ending learning process. Applying ‘hear, see, talk, and do’ way of learning, then, becomes very crucial. This way, I believe, demonstrate that we retain more of what we learn when we use more of our senses and can apply what we are learning.