Maluku Province is one of the poorest, least developed and least educated provinces in Indonesia. Many Moluccan students can’t get access to good English training, and therefore scholarship opportunities, because of their remote locations or poor economic background. And yet there are many Moluccans living overseas (about 70,000 in Holland) who still have affinities to Maluku.
Early this year, some members of the Basudara Maluku Global set up a free online language course platform, Bahasa Basudara, which means talk to your family. The idea is to have fluent and native English speakers (and other languages) to voluntarily tutor students in Maluku via online training, mainly focusing on conversation skills. There are now 84 registered tutors worldwide. Free online classes started in May this year. Bahasa Basudara runs 75 classes (70 English, 4 German and 1 Indonesian) weekly on a 10-12 week schedule.
If you are interested to know more about Bahasa Basudara, A-IS member Jeff Malaihollo has writen a short article about the platform. To read the article, click here. You can also check the Bahasa Basudara website here and listen to the students’ testimonies here.