On December 26, 2013, at the Guwosari Village Hall complex, Pajangan District, Bantul, the year closing activities of the Village Assistance Team from SurveyMETER were filled with two activities a day. The first one was “ECED Learning and Environmental Management Training” attended by 12 ECED in Guwosari Village. The training material was delivered by an ECED expert, Dra. Kis Rahayu, principal of the Aisyiah Ngampilan Excellent ECED and a lecturer in ECED education subject at Ahmad Dahlan University Yogyakarta. Although it was held for a full day from morning until late in the afternoon, all participants were enthusiastic since they received different training materials from the previous one.

It seemed to be a closing bonus from a series of 8 Training Of Trainers (TOT) on Nutrition Education for 3 ECED components, namely ECED educators, parents, and students throughout Guwosari Village, delivered by One Earth Integral Education Foundation.

The second activity was “Family Basic Data Collection Training for 2014 Guwosari Village Profile”. It was attended by each hamlet administrator throughout Guwosari Village and 30 youths from the Guwosari Village Youth Organization, took place from afternoon to evening, and was delivered by Edy Purwanto, M.Sc from SurveyMETER.

It aimed to follow up on the sub-program of assisting the preparation of online village profiles in the PRODESKEL program of the Ministry of Home Affairs already carried out by SurveyMETER in this village. Having completed the training activities, Guwosari Village, accompanied by SurveyMETER, would continue to independently prepare 2014 village profiles by involving 2 to 3 youths in each hamlet as field data collectors. For the effectiveness of the data collection process, officers would participate in community meetings in their hamlet by distributing basic family data forms.. Later they would conduct a short training to the community on how to fill out the questionnaires so they could fill them out independently by themselves.

The innovation in the preparation of PRODESKEL by involving the youth was also to identify a comparison of the effectiveness of the family data collection process involved Posyandu cadres in each hamlet in previous years.  (JF)