Sometimes Fadilla Mutiarawati has to climb a tree to conduct class or spend the morning herding cattle alongside her pupils before herding them up for roll call. Sometimes her students ditch school and take off into the jungle to hunt squirrels with slingshots.

Fadilla volunteers for Sokola, a grassroots organization that provides alternative education to indigenous and marginalized communities in the most remote areas of Indonesia.

She has been with Sokola since 2004, and has set up schools and taught classes in some places where no one has ever even heard of a public school, let alone how to take the national exams.

Why did you join Sokola?

Because the idea behind Sokola is, if you can’t donate money then you can donate yourself. We teach basic education and life skills. In the jungle, we have human rights classes and we also teach other skills like sablon (screen printing). There are villages that also operate community newspapers.

I heard there is a community in South Sulawesi where class is held in trees.

It’s in Kajang, South Sulawesi. Most of the children have to take care of animals. We usually go to where the children care for the animals. The animals graze and we have class in the shade. The best place to learn is up in the trees.

We have a wooden community center in the middle of the forest called Bukit 12 in Jambi, Sumatra. Children usually bring their slingshots so if they want to catch an animal they can do it at anytime. Sometimes, while we are having classes, they suddenly see an animal off in the jungle and they leave everything and chase after it.

AMAZING.