By Bro. Ephrem Santos, SDB

Jakarta, Indonesia, 24 October 2019 -- Last week, (8-13 October 2019) Jakarta was the venue for the third meeting of Country representatives of the Don Bosco TVET Centers in ASEAN. Four days were spent sharing experiences and preparing the third quarterly reports that will lead to the end-of-the-year report and evaluation of the project, funded through the Don Bosco Mondo Foundation of Germany.

The group was welcomed by Fr Andrew Wong, Superior of the vice province of Indonesia. He was followed up by a series of discussions and review of the outputs that will be reflected in the updated database outcomes for each of the country members.

Some of these outcomes include the increased number of trainees, or an increase in the number of certified instructors or accredited courses following the ASEAN Standards. The other significant expectation would be the increase in the number of collaborations with industry and other institutions that all help towards the employment of our trainees, thereby lessening the poverty level of the youth in our area.

The Don Bosco Tech ASEAN is also facilitating the cooperation with large training centers that do not belong to the Salesians. In this regard, a day was set aside to visit Polman Institute, an automotive Training Center supplying manpower and skilled technicians for the automotive companies related to Astra Indonesia. The group could learn some of their best practices and see the possibility of adopting them forthe improvment of the Salesian In this regard, the Philippine and Indonesian TVET Centers are already doing some form of cooperation.

The other task of the Don Bosco Tech ASEAN is also to assist the Don Bosco TVET centers of each country to initiate the collaboration with the SEAMEO institutions (South East Asian Ministers of Education Organization). Hence, a meeting was held with the SEAMOLEC Institute (South East Asian Regional Open Learning Center) that offers to help host webinars or other forms of on-line learning that the Salesian centers might want to carry out in the future. An MOU was signed between each participating country.

As a side note, this 3rd Meeting of Don Bosco Tech ASEAN would not be complete if there was no contact with a Don Bosco TVET Center. The participants had to make a long journey back and forth through the traffic of Jakarta to be able to meet the students and instructors of BLK Don Bosco in Tigaraksa and share their constructive comments. Finally, the last evening in Jakarta was a dinner hosted by Fr Andrew Wong in the Formation house at Sunter which also serves as the Provincial house, among the senior Salesians and the young confreres in the post-novitiate.

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