BECOMING A GOOD SENATOR THROUGH CHARACTER BUILDING PROGRAM

PERBAIKAN PRODI: MENTERJEMAHKAN VISI, KOLABORASI DENGAN ALUMNI & PUBLIKASI TINGKAT INTERNASIONAL

Arundati Shinta

Fakultas Psikologi Universitas Proklamasi 45

Yogyakarta

Latar belakang tulisan ini ada empat. Pertama, orang-orang yang ingin menjadi politisi sering kesulitan dalam meraih cita-citanya itu. Pada umumnya, hambatan utamanya adalah ketiadaan modal. Pada sisi lain, partai juga kesulitan mengorbitkan kader partai karena karakter kader kurang teruji. Untuk mengatasi hal itu, maka kader sebenarnya bisa menguji karakter mereka melalui partsipasi pada pendidikan karakter. Di UP45, ada pendidikan karakter yaitu IAYP (International Award for Young People). Bila seseorang lulus dari pendidikan karakter itu, maka ia cenderung teruji ketekunannya. Tekun adalah salah satu karakter unggul.

Latar belakang kedua dari tulisan ini adalah adanya kebutuhan untuk menterjemahkan visi prodi Psikologi UP45. Kata kunci dari visi prodi Psikologi adalah iptek, sumber daya manusia, energi, dan eksponen angkatan 45. Tulisan ini tertuju pada kata-kata sumber daya manusia. Pada era dunia maya seperti sekarang ini, maka banyak mahasiswa yang cenderung berkarakter lebih mementingkan diri sendiri serta kurang peduli pada dunia nyata di sekelilingnya. Adanya partisipasi dalam pendidikan karakter ini akan mengurangi kecenderung kebiasaan egois para mahasiswa.

Latar belakang ketiga dari tulisan ini adalah adanya kebutuhan untuk publikasi di kalangan dosen pada level internasional. Partisipasi dosen dalam seminar nasional adalah bukti bahwa dosen mengikuti kata-kata bijak publish or perish yaitu mempublikasikan karya atau mati. Dosen yang tidak pernah mempublikasikan karyanya adalah dosen yang tidak dapat dijadikan suri tauladan bagi mahasiswanya.

Latar belakang keempat tulisan ini adalah adanya kebutuhan untuk menggugah potensi alumni untuk membangun Prodi Psikologi UP45. Alumni yang berkolaborasi dan membiayai seluruh proyek publikasi ini adalah Dra. Indriyati Eko Purwaningsih, S.Psi., M.Si., dekan berprestasi di Fakultas Psikologi Universitas Sarjana Wiyata Taman Siswa Yogyakarta.

Sebagai catatan, tulisan lengkap naskah ini sudah dipresentasikan dalam ajang internasional atau international call for paper di Universitas Islam Gunung Jati Bandung yang berkolaborasi dengan the Internationa; Indonesia Forum Conference (IIF). Presentasi dilaksnakan pada 19-20 Agustus 2014. Pada saat acara berlangsung, tidak diterbitkan suatu buku prosiding. Oleh karena itu naskah lengkap presentasi itu akan dipublikasikan di majalah ini. Semua naskah karya dosen direncanakan akan dipublikasikan melalui majalah Kupasiana dan juga media daring lainnya. Publikasi daring ini untuk memenuhi azas transparansi, penyebarluasan gagasan, dan juga untuk mempermudah proses akreditasi Program Studi Psikologi UP45 serta akreditasi institusi.

Suggested citation:

Shinta, A. & Purwaningsih, I.E. (2014). Becoming a good senator through character building program. The 7^th International Indonesia Forum Conference, organized by the State Islamic Universty SGD Bandung and the International Indonesia Forum (IIF) with the theme: “Representing Indonesia”. Bandung, 19-20 August 2014. 

BECOMING A GOOD SENATOR THROUGH CHARACTER

BUILDING PROGRAM

Arundati Shinta

Proklamasi University, Yogyakarta Indonesia

and

Indriyati Eko Purwaningsih

Tamansiswa University, Yogyakarta Indonesia

Objective of this essay is to explain about a strategy for party to raise a promising leader. The leader target is young people voter. Based on our observation, young generation is more likely to be apathetic, refuse to vote, and reject the corrupted party. If they participate, their leader idol will be a senator with excellence track record and ability to communicate harmoniously with young generation. Unfortunately, the supply side from inside the party, it is very difficult to obtain an idol leader. Generally, in order to create a good leader, political party tends to make a coalition with other party or organize a convention. This political situation reflects that party is unable to arrange politic education among the cadres. A strategy to raise a promising leader is implementing a character building program among young people. Actually there are numerous character building programs in Indonesia. However, a very good and famous character building program such as the IAYP (International Award for Young People) is devoted on this essay. It is because the IAYP program is very famous, prestigious, and applicable to all people with heterogeneous demographic characteristics such as religion, ethnic, language, and gender. Most of young people in more than 144 countries participated in this program. In order to motivate young people to vote, a senator candidate could be a leader of that IAYP program. On that program, a promising leader is trained to be a good model through applying the IAYP activities into his or her daily life. Output of this program is that a participant would have good habits such as discipline, tough, and sensitive to the poor. Therefore becoming the IAYP participant, one would be easier to attract young people to vote.

Key words: young people, character building, good habits, motivation to vote.

INTRODUCTION

Becoming a good party leader in this era is more difficult than past times. Through internet, every one can observe other’s behaviors, track records, and even their past histories. A leader candidate with bad track records can be traced easily and therefore it will be very difficult for him or her to influence people, especially young generation. Those young people are much advance in social media.

The relevant problem with the party leader recruitment is about the low level ability in influencing people. His or her position as a leader party is because of money rather than personal magnetism. This is shown from several party leader women, whom obtain that high position from their spouse or family reason. They became a party leader candidate although they have never been a party cadre or party committee before (Suacana, 2011). Strong family relationship will surely obstruct strong cadre regeneration and also strengthen the oligarchy phenomenon (Saptamaji, 2014).

In order to obtain leadership ability, a party can instruct cadre to pursue training. Training out side party is certainly expensive, and that valuable event usually is only for outstanding party cadres. Training inside party, on the other hand, is complicated such as unscheduled training agenda, the dependency of training material on the actual events rather than on political knowledge enrichment, and the heterogeneous education level among cadres. Therefore, political knowledge development through inside party training is ineffective (Suacana, 2011).

Basic of the inadequate skill on politic among party cadres is from the poor recruitment system. The system favored more on popular characteristics such as famous, having wide social net, and rich (Nurjaman, 2013). Even one can be a leader party through a coalition between friends, not through the lowest level cadre. It is because party tends to widen the mass rather than developing mass (Saptamaji, 2014). Therefore human resource quality of party is likely low.

Good character presumably is more likely to be neglected by most of cadres. Actually a party leader should have good character such as feel disposed as a servant rather than being a king. In a party, a leader is more likely to be served. It is because party cadres’ ambition is possessing power orientation through politic struggling and therefore they will surely have opportunity to implement their own policy (Budiarjo in Saptamaji, 2014). Because of that reason, numerous people want to be politician in order to obtain power and money, not serving community.

Objective of this essay is explaining an alternative strategy for party to recruit cadres with good characters. Examples of those good characters are sensitive to people’s needs, having commitment to serve people, high integrity, and responsible to people. In order to obtain those good characters is conducting a character building program. This program is aimed to either young or old generations. The benefits of this paper is to give inspiration to party officials and the public that the organized character building can generate great leader candidates with commendable characters.

SUPERIOR CHARACTERS OF A LEADER

What are the superior characters of a leader? Based on the article written by Robert Greenleaf and Larry Spears, there are 11 characters that should be possessed by a leader (Barbuto Jr., 2007: 1). These 11 characters are: calling, empathy, healing, stewardship, listening, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, growth, and building community. The first four characters are difficult to teach because those characters are already integrated in daily behavior, while the next seven characters is the result of throughout life learning. Although the first four characters are difficult to learn, there are ways you can do at least being 'close' to the four characters that are so nature. Here is an explanation of the superior 11 characters.

Calling means a leader is willing to sacrifice his own interest for the sake of the organization. Everything is done for the welfare of those they lead. Empathy is the ability to feel as perceived by others. Empathy can be described as walking with the shoes of others. This empathy ability causes people not to hesitate in expressing the problem to the leader, as a leader will be able to understand it. Healing means the ability to create a cool environment for people whose emotions are injured or are having complication problems. This healing ability causes people who are suffering not to hesitate in approaching the leader. Stewardship is the ability to prepare the organization, so that it can promote the development of a better society.

Listening is the ability to hear the ideas from the community and to appreciate it. This is not a mock-up appreciation; hence people will become convinced that their idea is really being appreciated. Awareness is the ability to be responsive of everything that is going on around him. A responsive leader will not be easily fooled by the nice appearance. Persuasion is the ability to direct the public, so people will be delighted to do the leader’s instruction without grudging. Conceptualization is the ability of a leader that could encourage people to voice their ideas, implement the organization's vision, dream of great things. Strengthening the environment helps to produce creative ideas. Foresight is the ability to anticipate things that might be detrimental to the organization.  Growth is the ability to succeed in others and he does not hesitate to help others personally and professionally and even join in praying. Building community is the ability to lead the organization as a community, where everyone is comfortable to stay in the organization.

The first four characters (calling, empathy, healing, and stewardship) tend to be an unrealistic ability to possess, because it is difficult to learn (Barbuto Jr., 2007: 3). Yet still there are ways to acquire these characters. The basic of the four main characters is internal motivation which is similar to the pro social behavior, altruism motivation. Altruism motivation is the tendency behavior in making the other party more prosperous (Franzoi, 2003: 514). This behavior tends to occur in holy persons or clergymen who assign themselves to serve the people. For ordinary people, the behavior tendency to prosper other people may be 'maintained' by self-gaining of something intangible such as the feeling of happiness, friendship, satisfaction, or other positive senses. These intangible feelings will certainly not hurt the party being led.

How to nurture in close proximity of those four characters? The way to nurture such decent characters is by establishing the character building.

CHARACTER BUILDING

In general the character building is more often aimed at the young generation. In general those who organize the character building are also at old age. This kind of situation shows that the younger generation is in a subordinate position in the field of character than the older generation. It is based on the assumption that older people would have more experience and become much wiser and have more commendable characters. Yet the fact shows that the prisons for adults have more inhabitants than the one for younger ages. Thus, the character building is important not only for young people as well as for adults.

In connection with the character building of an excellent leader, a party can organize a character building program. Character building organized by the party should be different with the ones conducted in schools. The character building held in schools/colleges usually based on cognitive implementation and it relates to the principle disciplines. For example, the character building can be found in in the disciplines of religion and civics. If the grades for those subjects are poor, then they will be considered as having bad characters. This kind of method contributes a stigma which does not give a chance for improvement to them. Therefore, in this paper, the character building held by the party must be organized on voluntary basis.

How to voluntarily implement the character building program? Reflecting on the character building program that has scaled the world, which is IAYP, (International Award for Young People); a party can also adopt the IAYP’s program. The head office of IAYP is in the UK.  The awards are given to the participants from at least 144 countries. The purpose of this program is to teach the character building to the IAYP youths of 14-25 years in order to have strong mental qualities such as honesty, courage, discipline in time, fulfill the defined commitments, willing to train some skills throughout life, take care for the social environment, willing to stay healthy, enjoy the outdoor activities, and designing the future (McMenamin, 2011).

The activities to be undertaken by participants of IAYP program is designed to be able to beat (compete against) yourself, then take on positive things. This program consists of three levels, namely bronze, silver, and gold. For the bronze level, the main activity is a sport, skills and community service. Additional activities are specializations and adventures. In the specialization activities, participants allow to choose one of the three main preferred activities. The main and specialization activities are performed at least 60 minutes/week for the duration of 12 weeks. Adventure activity is to be carried out for two days and one night. Such activities should be carried out regularly, should not be interrupted, and should not be doubled. Although the implementation of these activities are supervised by instructors, but the successful of the activities’ implementation is determined by the honesty of the participants. Therefore, participants who are highly committed to the IAYP program will have strong positive characters. This is because these activities are simple but requires a very hard struggle to meet the applicable standards (Shinta, 2013).

CONCLUSION

The purpose of this writing is to explain the party's strategy in order to obtain capable leaders (senators) by organizing character building programs. One of the character building programs that can be adopted is the IAYP program which has an international-level. The character building program will direct the younger generation to have a strong character. To run this program, it is necessary that the party agent must be mature and serve as a program leader. In order to have the program run smoothly, the relationship among the leader and the younger generation participants must base on trust. This can be achieved if the leader has pastoral skills (Campbell et al., 2009: 126). Therefore, it is indeed that the character building program is not only suitable for the younger generation, but also for the adults.

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Suggested citation:

Shinta, A. & Purwaningsih, I.E. (2014). Becoming a good senator through character building program. The 7^th International Indonesia Forum Conference, organized by the State Islamic Universty SGD Bandung and the International Indonesia Forum (IIF) with the theme: “Representing Indonesia”. Bandung, 19-20 August 2014.

CURRICULUM VITAE

Arundati Shinta

Psychology Department, Proklamasi University

* Jl. Proklamasi No. 1, Babarsari Yogyakarta Indonesia - 55281

( 085743727503

: arundatishinta@yahoo.com

EDUCATION

·         February 2006 – March 2012: Doctor Program, Psychology Faculty, Gadjah Mada University Yogyakarta. The BPPS Scholarship (scholarship for post graduate student, from the Indonesian Government).

·         January 1989- April 1991: MA degree, the Flinders University of South Australia, Human Resources and Population Studies. The IDP (International Development Program) Scholarship.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

·         August 2005 – presently: Editor of the Psychology Journal, Psychology Department, Proklamasi 45 University Yogyakarta.

·         March 1997 – January 2006: Editor of the Proklamasi Journal of Science, Proklamasi 45 University.

·         August 1995 – presently: Lecturer at the Psychology Faculty, Proklamasi University, Yogyakarta.

·         March 1986 - January 1995: Lecturer at the Socical & Politic Faculty, Andalas University, Padang, West Sumatra.

INTERNATIONAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Shinta, A. (2013). Character building on young people: Investment to be a tough leader. Proceeding of the International Seminar on Leadership and Social Action. Page 3-12. No. ISBN. 978-602-14940-0-4.

Shinta, A. (2012). The influence of psychosocial variables on children’s gender role choice. The 5^th International Indonesia Forum 2012 “Between The Mountain and The Sea: Positioning Indonesia”.  Organized by Gadjah Mada University and Yale University, July 9-10, 2012.

Shinta, A. (2010). Wood baby dolls vs Ragnarok: The difference in toy preference of children based on gender reason. Proceeding International Seminar on Early Childhood Education in and for Socio-cultural Diversity (As a Foundation to Develop Character Building), page 106-116. No. ISBN. 979-26-1819-8.

Shinta, A. (2001). Teach our children to plant more trees for their children. Participant of the International Poster Contest. Organized by the BKKBN Jakarta and UNFPA (United Nations Population Fund, August 31, 2001.