In 2021, WwB implemented its ‘MotherSchools: Parenting for Peace’ Model in West Java, Indonesia with its local partner Tanoker Ledokombo. The programme in Indonesia, which is supported by the L’Oréal Fund for Women, saw five groups convene across four municipalities: Sabrang, Ketempah, Lesung and Bondowoso. This impact report offers an overview of the MotherSchools project in Indonesia, introduces WwB’s impact model, and presents the impact findings based on quantitative and qualitative data from the perspectives of project stakeholders, including Participants, Teachers, and Notetakers.
One iteration of the MotherSchools Indonesia Parenting for Peace programme was implemented by Women without Borders and its local partner Tanoker Ledokombo in 2021. The project was made possible through the generous support of the L’Oréal Fund for Women.
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The following testimonials are taken as a snapshot into programme impact. To read more on the impact of MotherSchools Indonesia 2021, read the full report here.
“There are a lot of places that we can gather, like mother or women gathering in our community, but there has been nothing like the MotherSchools. We can only feel safe and comfortable when we are in the MotherSchools. It’s probably because we have the rules that we make ourselves, that we enforce ourselves. I think it’s because of the rules, that we are able to feel safe in the space.”
– MotherSchools Teacher, Indonesia 2021
“[Participants] said that it’s because they didn’t know any better, so what they knew was that this is what their parents do to them, so they just follow their footsteps, sometimes they hit the kids, sometimes they pinch the kid or say harsh things to them, but then after learning from the MotherSchools, they know that to bring up kids they have to be peaceful, they have to have love and sincerity to bring up good kids.”
– MotherSchools Teacher, Indonesia 2021
“Once I got something that was annoying me from my kid’s WhatsApp chat […]. It is kind of a campaign to join a certain organisation and I feel so worried about that. I got the material about how to open the conversation with the children, how to protect them from the extremism. I’m trying not to get [mad] and I’m trying to speak slowly and gently with my kid, then it worked. Now, my child is not again being in that kind of community.”
– MotherSchools Participant, Indonesia 2021
“The mothers now have a more important role in their family and that’s huge for me. Now [they] can sit together with their husbands to make a decision, because before that doesn’t happen. Although it seems like a small thing, […] this is a very huge deal for me. […] It’s not the husbands’ fault that the women don’t make a decision in the household, it’s because us Javanese, our custom that women don’t make a decision, it’s the men that have to make a decision. These women, these mothers think that it’s not important for them to do such things and they think that, ‘okay, well the husbands can make a decision and it’s important for them and their decision will be good so I’m all good’. But after they learn in the MotherSchools that they have to take pride in themselves and they have also they need to get respect as well, then they are now able to sit with their partners and actually have an equal position in the household, in their family.”
– MotherSchools Teacher, Indonesia 2021
