Rural Youth 21st Century Workforce Ready

The educational system in Indonesia is facing significant quality and access challenges, and unemployment remains a real concern. Indonesian youth struggle to find their place in the national workforce which is undergoing significant change as a consequence of the burgeoning of information communications technologies. In 2007, the non-formal education center, called the Slukat Learning Center (SLC), was established in rural Gianyar, Bali to improve employment opportunities and facilitate empowerment by providing educational opportunities for rural children and youth. This paper reports early finding from a research project exploring how the curriculum at the learning center has been able to generate successful outcomes. Drawing upon data from interviews with the SLC Chairman and 18 SLC alumni, this paper focused upon how the curriculum has been able to empower rural Balinese youth in Gianyar, in ways that have enabled them to become future workforce ready. Aiming to contribute to the research in the field on youth empowerment through non-formal education, the data were analyzed using Bourdieu’s Social Reproduction Theory. The preliminary analysis reported here indicates that SLC can be considered a field within which the curriculum facilitates youth empowerment through supporting the construction of a new habitus and acquisition of a range of economic, cultural and social capitals.