Prevent Children Dropping Out of School, CBCPS Group does This Action
The Community-Based Child Protection System (CBCPS) group in Enrekang District, Enrekang Regency, South Sulawesi Province has existed since 2019. This group was formed in collaboration with Wahana Visi Indonesia and the local government through the Cocoa Life program funded by Mondelez. The CBCPS group was formed to protect children, including handling several cases of child protection such as cases of children dropping out of school.
Hartati (47), one of the administrators of the CBCPS group, said that the case of a child dropping out of school came to light when she was doing dissemination of knowledge of PATBM in a village. During the activity, one of the participants who attended was a mother who admitted that her child had dropped out of school. The mother then told the chronology of the reasons why her child was no longer in school. From her narrative, it was found that the child was no longer in school due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The online learning process makes children less enthusiastic about learning.
The number of school assignments that are continuous and with very minimal understanding of the subject matter due to the learning process is not optimal, resulting in children experiencing stress, so they do not want to go to school anymore. Since then, the child has not participated in the online or face-to-face learning process for almost a year at school. Efforts made by parents for the child so far have only advised their child to return to school, but the child did not respond well so the parents despaired and felt they had failed in educating their child.
After identifying the child's case, Hartati and the CBCPS group administrator took a persuasive approach to the child and the child's family. After getting an understanding of the importance of school, the parents and the child then commit to continuing their child's education.
The CBCPS group administrator then accompanies the parents to come to school and meets the child's principal and homeroom teacher to get a solution to this problem. The principal opens the way for the parents and the child by catching up with school assignments to be able to take the exam and be able to stay in grade 2 of high school.
During the process, CBCPS group administrators continue to accompany children by providing positive motivation to stay in school and monitoring children's activities through the approach taken to parents.
The parents of the children are very grateful to the CBCPS management for their assistance during the process in assisting and motivating their children, so they can go back to school with their friends.
Written by: Oktavianti Mariana. Cocoa Life Field Facilitator, Wahana Visi Indonesia
