1. How would you propose the plan to prepare students in your country to work in different culturally, technologically, and economically context?
Education plays very important role in development of the country by preparing new generations to become leaders in the future. Timor-Leste geographically located in Asia as a newest country. The country has multicultural, multiethnic and multilingual and has become a member of Portuguese speaking countries that can connect directly to Europe, Africa, and Latin America. Therefore, Timor-Leste has always been habitual working with people from different cultures and ethnic groups. As we realize that global developing makes people lives anywhere in the world that is very important of communication to connect each other. In Timor-Leste context, it is needed to prepare young generations via good education in order to produce qualified people in competitive job markets as they should enrich themselves with various kinds of skills and knowledge to bring the nation forward.
Technology takes part in shifting human lives in society to influence our lifestyles, as those days there was not any internet to access; communication was not easy at all. Nowadays, how people to contact among themselves with a new way of communications using technology to talk, text chatting etc. As a plan to prepare students, it is an imperative to set the conditions such as providing computer laboratory and Public computer center in schools by engaging students to enhance their skills in computer literacy. The purpose of education to be understood that giving our time that focus on fostering of intellectual by well-educated in pursue of degree as high as possible is being ready to be employed, due to the fact that good payment is higher education. So, through the education it is possible to alleviate the poverty and recover from economically problems.
2. What has been done by your country in each context?
Timor-Leste faces many political, economy and social challenges as a new nation that attempted to build the foundation of the nation, notably education is most pressing issue. The government of Timor-leste has two official languages, such as: Portuguese and Tetum where in teaching and learning process use Portuguese Language as an instruction language along with Tetum. Therefore, the Ministry of education was established the MoU with both Brazil and Portuguese Governments to send their teachers to guide and provide formation to local teachers. Besides that, Timor-Leste sent its big number of students to study in Europe like Portugal, USA, Cuba, Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Fiji, New Zealand and Australia. It is the signal of bilateral and multilateral relations to foster Timor-Leste’s education by engaging students to work in various different cultures.
The ministry of education has been bilaterally working with Portuguese Formation Institution to train young people in technology notably in Public Computer Training center, but recently it has not been covered all young people yet. On the other side, the ministry of education closely working with locals vocational training that belong to the Catholic church to accomplish training skills and also Non-government Organizations (NGOs) to assist the government in improving the young people’s skills. In spite of internal programs, there is also another program from the government to send those who have degrees in Information and Communication Technology to study abroad. The government of Timor-Leste invests more in education by sending students to pursue knowledge in overseas in order to produce human resources. The fund has been taking from oil and gas on account of Timor-Leste economically depends on oil and gas revenues.
