POKJA! The Role of University-Community Working Groups UIN-CSO in Makassar, South Sulawesi, Indonesia

Masse, Ambo and Tasruddin, Ramsiah and Juhannis, Hamdan and Rijal, Syamsu and Nurdin, Azizah (2013) POKJA! The Role of University-Community Working Groups UIN-CSO in Makassar, South Sulawesi, Indonesia. In: CU Expo 2013, June 12-15, 2013, Corner Brook, NL, Canada. (Submitted)

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Abstract

State Islamic University of Alauddin (UIN) is one of the biggest universities in South Sulawesi. Although its founding mission was to promote moderate Islam in Indonesia, it works on many issues with people from diverse ethnic, religious and cultural backgrounds. The current mission of the university emphasizes its role in improving social capacity through community outreach to all communities in Sulawesi. UIN has initiated new partnerships with the non-profit sector (Community Service Organizations (CSO)). The main purpose of these partnerships is to improve the capacity of UIN to develop programs with local communities in partnership with local NGOs, focusing on democratic governance. Local level democracy and decentralized decision-making are still relatively new in Indonesia and have been in practice only for about 20 years. Important issues include conflict resolution, human rights protection, social and economic well-being, gender equality and environmental management. One innovation has been the establishment of POKJA. The POKJA are collaborative working groups. UIN and CSO representatives together are designing and carrying out initiatives in jointly selected coastal and poor communities. In this workshop, we will tell the story of our POKJA experience so far and invite participants to assist us in thinking about how to address upcoming challenges and opportunities. One set of important issues concerns the dynamics of democratic governance in a predominantly Muslim society, especially efforts to build co-existent perceptions between Islamic ideas on governance and modern good governance ideas. We will also present practical challenges faced by our partnerships, as this is a new model for UIN in community outreach, and as CSOs also have a changing role in our region. We look forward to discussing with conference participants our efforts to improve university community partnership and build democratic capacity in South Sulawesi in particular, and in Indonesia in general.

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