The Palembang City Administration in cooperation with the Hanns Seidel Foundation has conducted Teachers’ Training on the Use of Climate Change Module of HSF from 25-27 July 2011 in Palembang. The training was to respond the request of the city on the need of climate change awareness to be raised through education.

The city has expressed the request during the 2010 Annual Meeting of the Association of Cities Administration (APEKSI) held in Bandung. During the meeting, HSF shared its views on the importance of education as a strategic point in raising climate change awareness of students, and presented its outstanding experience in environmental education for more than 10 years in Indonesia, including the recent module on climate change. HSF has demonstrated its readiness and willingness to cooperate with cities in education and training on climate change.

The training that has attracted a total of 120 participants, consisting of teachers, headmasters, officials and media, was officially opened by Deputy Mayor of Palembang, Drs. Erwin R. Bakri, MM. The city’s commitment to climate change training has attracted local media to cover the event, such as Palembang Ekspress, dated 26 July 2011, with the headline “Climate Change is in Schools”.

The training consisted of an introductory session on the understanding of climate change and HSF module, presented by Ms. Nila Puspita, Program Coordinator of HSF, and panel discussion to present three main activities that contribute to the increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, namely deforestation and forest degradation, transportation and energy, delivered by the module’s writers, Mr. Delon Marthinus (CER Indonesia) and Ms. Ratih Widayanti (PELANGI Indonesia). The session was followed by exercising within working groups on the use of teacher’s and student’s books, facilitated by Ms. Maria Mumpuni, BIMA. The resource persons evaluated the working groups to make sure that the climate change substantially is well disseminated to teachers.

The Head of Environmental Agency of Palembang city administration, Drs. K. Abubakar, MM., shared with the participants the city program in tackling with climate change. Palembang is the only city in Indonesia and among other three cities in ASEAN that has received the ASEAN Environmentally Sustainable Cities Awards. The presentation has shown the strong commitment of the city towards environment such as the Mayor’s acknowledgment to this training by issuing signed certificates for having this training to teachers, allocation of city’s budget for environmental activities including this training, etc.

The training also equipped teachers with skills on how to develop teaching plans (RPP) and syllabus of climate change learning. Providing climate change education is not a subject in schools and it should be taught in integration with the existing subjects of the schools’ curriculum. This session was facilitated by Ms. Stien Matakupan (Teachers’ School of the Sampoerna Foundation), Dra. Sulistyowati MSc (University of Satya Wacana) and Mr. Agusti Tamrin MPd. (University of Solo). The developed RPP and syllabus will be exercised in peer teachings. The trainers provided feedbacks and inputs to teachers to improve the peer teaching. Majority of the participants have expressed to the conducted internal evaluation toward the training that this session was the most interesting one because the session has strengthened teachers’ skills to deliver the module both by monolithic and integrating approaches.

The Head of Environmental Agency, Drs. K. Abubakar MM., in his closing statements underlined  that the training was very good and it is the first training of its kind conducted to teachers and headmasters in Palembang. Mr. Abubakar has expressed his gratitude to HSF for the good work in doing the training and shown his willingness to extend this training to other schools in Palembang with bigger audience.