FAQs

It was first launched in Surabaya, 2014 with a city-wide writing contest for children, themed ‘Breaking through the World with Words: My Writing Transforms Our Future Environment’ (or ‘Menembus Dunia dengan Menulis: Tulisanku Mengubah Masa Depan Lingkungan’). IWEC’s founder and CEO, Maylia E. Sutarto, is a home-school practitioner and educator for two decades now. Based on the curriculum she experimented with her oldest daughter, IWEC was born, in support of youth voices for juvenile literature.

We were seeing a deficit in children’s literature in Indonesia, particularly those which prompted their capacity to think critically and imaginatively. We knew that children have the wonderful capacity for complex, nuanced thinking and praxis. However, capitalist culture wants us to smother that emergent potential, so that it can continue to extract and exploit mindlessly. IWEC envisions a literary future where children’s voices are included and considered important in their narratives. 

Besides guiding children to navigate self-expression independently through the step-by-step learning of literary techniques and practice, IWEC’s curriculum implements a foundational method of learning which equips children with two tools: 1) teaches children to have the confidence to open-mindedly discuss and pursue knowledge wherever they go, and 2) fosters a culture of care, resilience and growth, which they apply in whatever work. Through these foundations, we are confident that the rich complexity of literature will follow in their continuously developing strands of wisdom. 

We find that most public and private Indonesian schools do not promote and facilitate children with the tools for critical and creative thinking. The spaces IWEC holds for our children complements that deficit, particularly by convening communities where they can grow and learn from one another. Therefore, they learn to be interdependent and decentralised, instead of the individualistic and competitive, which are quite prominent traits in school environments. 

IWEC’s learning system in class has always focused on building observational and discursive skills; expanding perspectives by listening to others, nourishing our reasoning, sharing our knowledge wealth, basically decentralising ourselves at the core of our work. Because of that, children are compelled to sharpen their linguistic and expressive tools, to organise and structure their thinking in order to communicate, and to find pluralistic, contextual strategies for approaching an issue. Sometimes, as creative writing opens access to the things we repress, we have counselling sessions after class when the child feels vulnerable. We give them room and guide them through sitting with their vulnerability, so that they may have the right tools to untangle their experiences and comfort themselves. All these help nurture an empowering attitude towards themselves and their communities. 

We mustn’t ever think that one is more important than the other, or that one should be prioritised over the other, that they are mutually exclusive. The fact is some of the best transformative works have united creative praxis and expression with epistemic thought. IWEC believes that children’s capacity to strategise and create just solutions will only grow, deepened by the interdisciplinary nature of literary arts. Not only that, but they will possess deep empathy and care for others, for themselves, a sense of belonging and worth that extends to each of their own beautiful legacy. 

IWEC hopes that parents can put their trust in their children, believe in the beautiful way their minds often work, and believe in their growth while knowing it will not be all butterflies and rainbows. Children’s messiness, their troubles and errors are part of the process. Their minds have great capacity to understand what adults think are too complex for them to comprehend. Most of all, they have the incredible space to care in their hearts. Their longing to create a community, a space of belonging, for themselves shows underneath the hammered-in capitalist formal education. 

IWEC wants parents to understand that providing a creative space for their child does not necessarily mean the child will dedicate their life to creative work only. We have had plenty of students whose dreams are to be a lawyer, an engineer, a doctor, a sociologist, as many as those who wish to pursue the creative path. Writing and art aren’t something you make a career out of; it is something which you do along with many other practices. Writing and art enrich your learning and work, rather than inhibit their progress. 

IWEC necessitates that there be diverse intercommunication in classrooms, that students, or parents, are not allowed to exclude one another, no matter what the circumstances which have led to the exclusion are. Understanding one another, no matter the differences, is important to us. Therefore, when we have neurodivergent, disabled, different-race, -ethnicity or -religion students, we establish a collective understanding of the boundaries of each child in class. What they like, dislike, are comfortable and uncomfortable with, how to communicate with them effectively, how to make them comfortable, etc… We have also made access to needs possible by customising care webs of sustenance, such as providing menstrual hygiene products in class, having occasional potlucks for breaktime, grounding activities, soothing them with mechanisms that work for them. Gratefully, all of our students have been nothing but accepting of one another, especially the pre-teenagers. It only goes to show how beautiful children are, and it further strengthens our will to protect them.

One of the challenges IWEC has faced is instilling tolerance among some of our teenage and older students, who, 1 out of 4 people, have displayed passive hostility or visible discomfort towards others of different, often minority, identities. While this is not prominent, helping them unlearn this deeply internalised prejudice is still one of our main concerns. This is an issue of upbringing, a nerve which got disconnected. In order to combat this, it is necessary for parents and other adults to give room for them to face these ‘discomforts’ and decentralise. What is often not realised is that children and teenagers are ready to have these important conversations, however difficult they may seem to be. By extending justice-minded guidance to understand the world around them, while regarding them as interdependent, capable thinkers, we create a safe space for them to learn and create.

On the macro scale, however, IWEC envisions an expansion of these spaces to outside of Java, decentralising our narratives from Java to amplify the beautiful young artists across the archipelago. This has been difficult to achieve due to lack of resources and funding. We were so blessed to have been able to bring our creative space to the children in Sigi, Kalimantan, despite the brief time we were afforded. It was a transformative experience which we would love to sustain.