Stories

With MAMPU Training, Fitriani Fights for the Early Childhood Education in Maros, South Sulawesi

Fitriani, or Ibu Fitri, is one of women legislators in Maros Parliament for 2014 – 2019 period. She became a member of Commission III which oversees the issue of health, education, agriculture, animal husbandry and BKKBD.

Before becoming a Parliament member, Ibu Fitri was a community-based education activist for early childhood education (PAUD), illiteracy, school dropouts and junior high school age children. Since 2000, Ibu Fitri managed PAUD in Maros, and in 2004 her colleagues made her as the chairman of the PAUD forum in Maros.

In the same year, Ibu Fitri joined in a political party and expressed her aspirations related to early childhood education to his fellow party members in the parliament to fight for early childhood education budget. According to her, it is very important because early childhood education has become a national program, but fees and transportation costs for early childhood teachers in Maros has not been included in the budget by local government. Finally, the budget proposal for early childhood teachers was included in year 2005 budget.

Her duty as Maros parliament member is her first time. In 2014, she was asked by her party to be one of the candidates for parliament members nomination, representing women in Maros region III electoral district that includes five districts, such as: Bantimurung, Simbang, Camba, Cenrana, and Mallawa. Since she was included in the nomination list, Ibu Fitri did a routine visitation to the people in grassroots. It was not a difficult task for her since she has been working in all villages in those 5 districts.

According to Ibu Fitri, rivalry between women and men in parliament and political party is very strict. Most people assumed that woman can not afford and can not be leaders. Women can only take care of the children. But then Ibu Fitri tried to convince the people to trust her and showed that women could also be representative of the people.

“The way I convinced them is by doing visitation every day. There is 7-10 places I visited every day. In one place, we invited the people in the village. Sometimes, I gathered special group for women, special group for men and there is mixed group as well“, said Ibu Fitri.

After being elected and inagurated as parliament member, at first she did not know in detail about her duties and functions. But then, MAMPU Program came to Maros and held various training for parliament strengthening. One of them is public speaking. From this training, Ibu Fitri learned how to do public speaking, and knew how to make an attractive and good speech.

Another training she got was designing regulations, budgeting, duties as parliament members, supervision and legal drafting. MAMPU program participated in the mentoring and training in the formation process of PAUD Special Committee and PAUD Regulation.

“More importantly, after knowing that the PAUD regulation is regulation initiated by the parliament, with MAMPU assistance, we came to know the process and ideal flow of regulations product creation. We passed the step one by one and we went to the field to get the idea from the early childhood education activist, students, parents and even the education office”, said Ibu Fitri.

During the ​​idea collecting assessment, Ibu Fitri with other parliament members discovered that the PAUD regulation draft was much needed by the community in the region, because early childhood education is supporting children who will enter primary education.