Multilingual Education in Belu, Indonesia

This report is a case study that highlights the effectiveness and limitations of BELAJAR, Save the Children’s Literacy Boost program in Belu, in addressing literacy skills across multiple languages through in-school and out-of-school interventions. By conducting classroom observations, interviews, and focus groups, and analyzing BELAJAR program documents, I explored three aspects of the BELAJAR program: its approach to multilingualism both in and out of the classroom, its teacher training, and finally, BELAJAR’s relationships with key stakeholders and partners. The three research questions are:

1. What is the process (historical and logistical) by which Save the Children has worked to address the multilingual nature of child literacy in the BELAJAR project?
2. How has teacher training been leveraged to address multilingual education for children?
3. What relationships and partnerships has the project leveraged to address the issues of multilingualism among participants in BELAJAR?

This report also offers recommendations to further enhance the program, at the end of each section.