Kids' bridge over cultural divide leads to the future

AN inspirational program is bearing the weight of the white paper's objective that every Australian school will partner with at least one in Asia.

Students study in the library of the Balaraja Madrasah

THIS is the other end of the Bridge, a quietly inspirational program now bearing the weight of the white paper's objective that every Australian school will partner with at least one in Asia.

Three years ago, the children now at Madrasah Balaraja in Indonesia weren't sure their schooling would take them anywhere beyond the local primary school.

Today they're swapping experiences, languages, culture and religion with Australian kids 5000km away in the Australia-Asia Bridge School Partnership.

Balaraja, a new Islamic junior high built by AusAID at Tangerang, just southwest of Jakarta, links by Bridge with Boort District School and Quambatook Group School, both in Victoria's southern Mallee.

Bridge ("Building Relationships through Inter-cultural Dialogue and Growing Engagement") was launched four years ago to partner Australian and Indonesian children and teachers through their schools. More than 90,000 Australians and Indonesians are now in regular and sometime daily contact, talking on Skype, emailing and on Facebook.

Started as a pilot four years ago between a couple of schools in both countries by the Australia-Indonesia Institute, by 2015 the program will cover close to 180,000 children and teachers, AII chairman Tim Lindsey said.

Supported by Australian government funding, Bridge now extends to China and South Korea, and soon to Thailand, encompassing 272 schools and more than 430 teachers.

The white paper prescribes that by 2025 "all schools will engage with at least one school in Asia to support the teaching of a priority Asian language" -- that is, Mandarin, Hindi, Bahasa Indonesia or Japanese.

Professor Lindsey says watching Bridge happening in Indonesian or Australian classrooms always "chokes me up a bit".

"When people see it in practice, kids communicating with each other across this huge cultural gap, it's so compelling. . .

"And one of the great things about it is the kids on both sides are so tech-savvy that they soon establish personal relationships outside what their schools are doing. We've seen whole school communities from Australia take holidays in Indonesia with their partnership schools."

The Victorian schools have hosted two Balaraja teachers and two Australian teachers have visited the madrasah.

Balaraja children and their parents are Australia-aware in a way that would have been unthinkable a few years ago for youngsters in a poor semi-rural area on the fringe of Jakarta. "People here have a very positive response to Australia," says Balaraja principal Bay Makmun.

Madrasah Balaraja is a microcosm of Australia's biggest and most successful educational programs abroad. It was one of more than 2000 schools AusAID built in 2006-11 in Indonesia at a cost of $395 million.