School that Dumped their Students in an Unknown City for them to Work for Money to Feed Themselves

Hiiii! Back with me, iyxan and yes, you read that title correctly.

That school is named IDN, an Indonesian boarding school located in Bogor. And I am one of the students of it.

In this article of mine, I’d like to tell the lessons I’ve learned and the experiences I got from this very unique school. (psst, this article is a school task)

What is IDN?

IDN, abbreviation of “Islamic Development Network” is a privately-owned junior & vocational high school founded by a person named “Deddy Gunawan, CCIE”. This school is founded to be an Islamic boarding school, like the thousands that exists in Indonesia. But it had a twist, the school not only focuses on Islamic values, but also IT, and life lessons.

The time that I’m writing this, the school had opened quite a few branches: IDN Jonggol (the centre), IDN Pamijahan (also known as IDN Bogor), IDN Sentul, IDN Solo, and the upcoming IDN Malang.

It had expanded its wings not only on Indonesia, but also overseas. IDN has a massive network of people that allowed them to arrange a monthly event where students teach (yes, teach) overseas schools. We had done many of these events in Malaysia, Japan, Australia, Thailand, and many more.

[img] Teaching Modern Web Development at Kolej Vokasional Perdagangan, Malaysia (my 4th IDN Mengajar)

IDN Mengajar

IDN has a program called IDN Mengajar (which translates to “IDN Teaching”), where students are required to teach at a school (preferrably in Indonesia) at least once in their lifetime being in IDN.

[img] Figma Introduction at Madiun (my 3rd IDN Mengajar)

Because of this program, overseas teaching programs like those aren’t that too far-fetched. We tend to have teaching materials like Web Development, Network Engineering, and Design. Sometimes the students we teach got them shocked, like how are these young kids teaching such complex topics? I had a lot of fun with them, and experienced a lot of things as well!

Oh yeah, did you think that IDN would look for the schools for you? No! You need to find them on your own.

You need to write a proposal on your own, you sometimes even have to meet the principal of the school directly, and propose your IDN Mengajar event. You do it by yourself. What the teachers did is monitor your progress, nothing else. Cool isn’t it?

But what if you get declined? Then find another one! That’s the life lesson IDN is trying to teach you.

As I’ve always remembered from one of my teacher “Life does not always give you what you want”.

If they declined, then find someone else who does, isn’t it that simple?

Feeling scared? That’s the point! You have to overcome your fears, you have to do it, it is a requirement of graduation. If you don’t do it, you will not graduate from IDN. Isn’t that challenging?

[img] My first IDN Mengajar (I had to get into a meeting with them)

Short story, I had a friend that had tried for months to find a school to teach on. They scoured the entire internet, checked on Google Maps, get their phone number and email. And contacted them.

They had sent emails and messages to over 50+ schools. And what did they get? Nothing. None responded. Some of them are “read” messages, some declined by the school, and most got ghosted. Wow, had it been a rollercoaster ride for them!

But they persisted, they kept on going. They took the matters outside of the online sphere, printed their proposal, and went to schools in real life. They got declined many times, they are told to sit and wait, only to get ghosted in real life (it was a really funny story). Until, they got one!

As a conclusion, they learnt so much things from this really terrible luck. They had persisted a lot of schools that declined their program, over the internet or even in front of their face. And that’s IDN!

Other Programs

But wait, what if I told you that there’s so much more programs in IDN? I was only scratching the surface.

There are:

• IDN Goes to Society. It’s where every new students are released into the open world for three days, for them to search for places to stay over the course of 3 days. This could include mosques, or even someone’s home. Whilst being there, they must get to know the stakeholders of the place, like the people that takes care of the mosque, the local village governing body, and a lot more. They also have to help the villagers with their work, like farming or teaching at a nearby small school.

• IDN Mission Impossible. A program for junior high school students where they are released into a crowded area (usually at a plaza, or places where street foods are), and their impossible mission is to, flip a Rp. 50.000 into Rp. 300.000. They are given Rp. 50k (which is like 5 dollars), and they have to somehow buy and sell anything until they get Rp. 300k (about 30 dollars).

• IDN Live-in. A program for senior high school students where they get into teams of 3, and released into an unknown city to find new people, and get to know them. They will live in that unknown city for just 4 days. They have to find a place to live in (just as the name), it could be a mosque or someone’s house. And they also have to find someone to be able to learn about a specific job, and to help them. They are given enough money to survive for 4 days in that city, so their main target is not searching for income (unlike IDN Tangguh), but to get to know a lot of people.

[img] Getting to know a lot of people (IDN Live-in)

• And the one and only, IDN Tangguh. IDN Tangguh is the quintessential program for IDN students before graduating into the next year. It is a requirement of graduation, so if you didn’t take IDN Tangguh when it happened, then you will be scheduled for the next year. IDN Tangguh is where students are released into an unknown city for a whole week. They are given enough money to survive for a day. Their task is simple, but a difficult one: To find a job to feed themselves for the whole week, and collect enough money to buy a bus ticket back to their school.

The program I mentioned in the title of the article is IDN Tangguh. In my experience, it was the lowest I’ve had ever been in my entire life. But the most important thing is that, I learnt a lesson. A very valuable lesson. A lesson that does not give an impact when you say it, but you need to experience it.

[img] Last day of IDN Tangguh

At Last

At the end, we dealt with it. And it was a massive 180 degree turn of my entire life.

Before I got to IDN, I was a hikikomori, a person that shuts themselves down in their own room, to live their own world in the internet.

But going to IDN, I realised that I could not be a shut-in for any longer, the world is cruel, but you have to go through it, or else you’ll just be stuck in your place doing nothing more impressive than a today’s toddler could do.

And that is a lesson.

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That’s all I could write on this article, its kind of rushed because it is a task given to my school so.. yeah.

Even though it sounds cool and all, the reality is that the school has its own pros and cons. And I will talk about them in detail later in the next few articles, after I got out of IDN.

So yeah, thanks!