It Is Better To Light a Candle Than Curse The Darkness

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was called "First Lady of the World." In the course of her life, ER became a leading figure on the issue of women's emancipation. Well before her life in the White House she was active in the Democratic Party and women's labor unions such as the Women's Trade Union League (WTUL) and the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU). During the Second World War she became co-chair of the national committee on Civilian Defense and advocated for women's participation in the war effort. She incorporated these issues into a wider range of social and political concerns such as civil rights, human rights, youth and democracy.

Although ER was well known for all these huge society activity, at her early age she was a shy girl. Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was born in New York City in 1884. She was the daughter of Elliot Roosevelt, brother of future president Theodore Roosevelt, and Anna Ludlow Hall. Her father, although loving, was an alcoholic; her mother was cold and disapproving. By the time she was eight, both of her parents had died, so she went to live with her grandmother. Awkward and shy, she was sent to finishing school in England when she was 15. Here the withdrawn Roosevelt blossomed, excelling in languages and literature and becoming popular for the first time in her life.

When she returned to New York City at age 17, Roosevelt refused to take part in the activities of high society. Instead, she chose to work toward social reforms. She taught dancing and literature at community centers and visited needy children in the slums. Through her work, she gained an intimate knowledge of how the poor actually lived. During this time, she met her fifth cousin Franklin D. Roosevelt. Against his mother's wishes, they were married on March 17, 1905. Her uncle, President Theodore Roosevelt, gave her away at the wedding. Over the next ten years, she gave birth to six children (one died in infancy).

Neither her family nor her husband's growing political career prevented Roosevelt from pursuing her own social concerns. While he served in Washington as assistant secretary of the navy during World War I, she worked with the Red Cross. She visited wounded troops in the Naval Hospital and worked to improve conditions at a hospital for the mentally ill. After Roosevelt and her husband returned to New York in 1920, she became active in movements calling for equal rights for women and better working conditions for female employees.

In the summer of 1921, Roosevelt's life changed drastically. While vacationing on an island off the coast of Maine, her husband was stricken with an attack of poliomyelitis (polio). The disease left him permanently paralyzed from the waist down. Determined to maintain her husband's political links, she quickly learned public speaking and political organization. Over the next few years, she campaigned for Democratic candidates in New York and worked for the women's division of the party.

In 1928 Roosevelt's husband was elected governor of New York. She then became his "legs," inspecting state hospitals, prisons, and homes for the elderly. In 1932 he was elected to the first of four presidential terms, giving her a national platform from which to address her concerns. Roosevelt forever changed the role of the First Lady. She began holding weekly press conferences, speaking only to women reporters mainly on women's issues. In 1935 she started writing a column, "My Day," which appeared in national newspapers. For its first three years, "My Day" focused on the concerns of women. By 1939, however, Roosevelt was addressing general political topics in her column.

This change reflected the increasing role Roosevelt played in her husband's policy decisions. More than anyone in the White House, she brought the cause of the oppressed to her husband's attention. She championed the struggle of Appalachian farmers to reclaim their land, and she made sure African Americans were receiving relief from New Deal programs. Throughout her reign as First Lady, she argued against all forms of discrimination. Roosevelt was especially concerned with the condition of America's youth during the Depression. In 1935 she helped found the National Youth Administration, which gave thousands of high school and college students part-time work.

It used to be said that all that time she was her husband ears, and eyes but it was never not as simple as all that for one thing she was her husband wife and had to take that consequencies. Today looking to her biography everybody realizes that It was uneasy life year by year for Eleanor Roosevelt. The marriage was not easy but was never broken. The relationship between husband and wife took a sharp turn in 1918. It was a defining moment when ER discovered that her husband had been having an affair with her former social secretary Lucy Mercer. The romantic aspect of her marriage ceased to exist, but her husband’s political ambitions made divorce impossible. She dicided stayed together with her husband and established a completely new relationship. Became in many respects his representative to the outside world when, for example, he was unable to travel.

Being the wife of an successful politician brought many possibilities, but ER had always been careful not to inhibit or contradict her husband's objectives, and set careful parameters for her conduct. The circles that Eleanor was raised in cast her in the role of helpmate wife. This position should have placed her outside of the political arena. The day that FDR was elected, November 8, 1932, ER was happy for her husband but feared the responsibilities that she would have to bear as manager of the White House household. Lorena Hickok, a journalist and friend with whom ER possibly had an amorous relationship, quoted ER in her 1962 book Eleanor Roosevelt, Reluctant First Lady as saying after the 1932 presidential elections: "For him, of course, I'm glad--sincerely. I could not have wanted it any other way. After all I'm a Democrat, too. Now I shall have to work out my own salvation. I'm afraid it may be a little difficult. I know what Washington is like, I've lived there." Immediately the national spotlight moved to follow ER, and she had to make changes in her life that she resisted strongly. But through all that she believe that “It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness”, better for her for always fighting for the greater good of society that would lead many people into solution and better world rather than just cursing uncomfortable she felt inside. This own choice to fight for the greater good of society coupled with any others outside influences produced a powerful mix that resulted in Mrs. Roosevelt, the First Lady of formidable political stature.

BUTET MANURUNG

The Person

Saur Marlina Manurung was born on February 21, 1972 in Jakarta the capital city of Indonesia. Her nickname “Butet” is a name that given by her family since she is the first daughter of “Batak” tribe family. She has been obsessed with indigenous peoples ever since she was a child. National Geographic was her favorite magazine, and she dreamed about becoming an explorer. She is a huge fan of Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones. The movie inspired her to use the teaching technique of learning through playing.
Butet was an excellent student, excelling in mathematics and an accomplished pianist—though she pursued these achievements out of a sense of obligation. Then her life took a sudden turn as she entered university and her father passed away. In college, she studied anthropology and education, and she finally had a chance to explore the world. An avid member of the Nature Lover’s Club, and eventually acting as its head, she became an expert hiker, rafter, and cave explorer. And on her expeditions she finally had the chance to meet firsthand the peoples she had previously encountered only in print of National Geographic magazines or on television.
She wrote her thesis on the relationship between traditional village leaders and government-installed functionaries in West Timor. As she developed her own interests, she supported herself by teaching piano, and today credits her father with imparting to her the discipline and perseverance that would shortly become crucial to her success.
Upon completing her degrees, she could actualy have had a well-paid, prestigious job in Jakarta instead, but this is simply not an option for her. Butet took what seemed to her a dream job: going to the forest to set up an education program with a remote tribe of hunter-gatherers, part of a conservation organization’s strategy to work with local communities.

The Problem
Indigenous peoples tend to evoke two strong opposing viewpoints. Because they live in fragile ecosystems, they are alternately viewed as its best defenders and worst enemies; as rightful inhabitants and dangerous encroachers; as a vigilant monitor and powerless victim of environmental catastrophe; as barometers of ecological diversity and as mere footnotes to major economic and political conflicts. In Indonesia, the paradox extends into a moral realm. To some, including much of the citizen sector, indigenous peoples are symbols of pristine nature, cultural
diversity, and gentle, simple living. While to others, including at times the state, they represent poverty, backwardness, and an embarrassingly primitive obstacle to progress. “Anak Dalam” tribe, is the indigenous peoples that live in Bukit Dua Belas region, National Park in Jambi Province, about 225 km Westside Jambi in Sumatra Island, Indonesia. The tribe that Butet first decided to dedicate her nobel work.
The tribe “Anak Dalam” people like many other indigenous peoples in Indonesia have often been cheated when dealing with outsiders. Apparently, one such outsider once came to them with a piece of paper, claiming it was a letter of appreciation from the local subdistrict head, and asked them to sign it. They did, and were promptly evicted from their land. The letter was actually a land deed, and they had unwittingly sold their land.
Education is a long-term solution to such problems, but there are significant technical obstacles. The state has been slow to setup schools in remote areas, in part because few teachers are willing to go there. Where schools do exist, the curriculum and teaching style hardly fit with local customs. The structure of a school day, rote lessons, and a uniform national curriculum are simply adapted the modern world way of life. At the end most projects to set up remote schools fail.
Indonesia does have a national network for indigenous peoples, but actually this body has very few active members who come from indigenous communities. Most are representatives from citizen organizations working on environmental protection and culture. Butet recounts a story of an organization that spent several years trying to win over forest peoples to its conservation agenda. When that failed, the organization went ahead and made a forest management plan in the name of the local tribe without their input or consent. The zoning plan ignored the way that people actually use the forest, and the strong cultural beliefs that guide their actions. When the community found out, it vowed not to cooperate and a conflict, usually the end will be violence.
Butet knew those problems and there was a best solution for them, but it comes to nothing without implementation. So she dicided to unlearn everything she thought she knew about education. She was unfazed by the fact that none of her predecessors in the role had made any headway, and that the latest died of malaria contracted in the jungle, she just tried to simply focus on living with the community.

Long Way For a Headway
Certainly, her job is noble and demanding, but it just simply because of “Anak Dalam” peoples simple mind and limited access to education they regard reading and writing as something related to black magic, and to master black magic, they must make an offering. The situation that made her way for a headway even harder,
so then she dicided to find another way spent more days with the people of “Anak Dalam”.
However the reality is not that simple. Armed with blackboards, chalk and some pens and paper, and she has to walks long distances every day to teach the various sub-groups of the isolated “Anak Dalam” tribe. This is not easy to travel on foot in a 60,500 hectare tropical forest. Even when she finally finds one group, is not sure that she will be accepted. If a group rejects her, she goes and finds another group, which may mean another long journey. If a group welcomes her, she encounters another set of difficulties: how to persuade them to learn to read, write and count? And what is the most suitable teaching method?.
Furthermore she must also adjust herself to a different sense of time. For example, when they are hungry, they go hunting. If she wants to spend time with them, she has to go along. She also has to trained herself emotionally and psychologically strong enough to immerse themselves in a totally alien culture. She ever inadvertently break a local taboo and suddenly be asked to leave the community for a time. She realized that she has to be perceptive enough to read the situation, sensitive enough to abide by the community’s wishes, yet strong enough to return and ask to be accepted back in.
It was a long struggle for Butet until one day, “Anak Dalam” children happened to hear Butet recite some of their verses from memory and were surprised that an outsider could quickly learn their traditional verses by heart. The children told her that their tribe had thousands of ancestral verses, but after several generations, many of these verses had been lost as they had not been written down. Then they ask she to record the verses and then teach them how to transcribe them. They started to show their interest in reading and writing. Something that made Butet realized then that children, with their natural curiosity, were most receptive to her presence. So then she shelved the curriculum and spent her days playing with the children, letting them teach her about their community and life in the forest. As the children took a greater interest, Butet looked for opportunities to teach them to read, write and count. After 6 years of intensive work with forest communities and the organizations that want to serve them, Butet crystallized her own vision for connecting with indigenous youth and make another long run to solve the problems of many Indigenous people in Indonesia.

Butet Manurung “A Woman of Letters”
After spending years of teaching in “Anak Dalam” tribe, in 2001 she became the recipient of the Man and Biosphere Award from the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) and UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Beside that she also awarded as the 1st Women of the year in Education by one of Indonesia Television Station.
Although she has made great achievements, she still hopes for more. She wants to prepare young indigenous people to help their communities make informed and
dignified choices about how they will cope with change. The first step is to provide basic education—literacy and comprehension of the wider world. Since the school system does not extend into remote areas, Butet is creating a national volunteer service named “Sokola” to place teachers in remote communities. Based on her own experience teaching in the forests of Sumatra, today Butet has developed a completely new method that allows people from pre-literate societies to quickly learn to read and write Indonesian. While Butet believes in the power of education in general, she is also scouting for young people who can begin building bridges between their communities and the many outside interests they now face. Her organization runs a program that brings youth from indigenous communities into national forums discussing natural resource use, forests, and forest communities.
So far, her organization Sokola working with a number of groups around Indonesia, who are facing a variety of challenges. The challenges that have convinced the members of Sokola that education for indigenous groups needs to be aimed at what those groups need. It also needs to be delivered in a much more flexible manner than the government system can provide. Rather than seeing nomadic or isolated indigenous groups as naked primitives who need modern schooling and a modern religion, they see them as needing appropriate forms of education, support, and protection as they face the challenges of adapting to a world which is encroaching on them from all sides. The challenges made them realize that for most modern society Butet with her Sokola just a committed group of volunteers. But for many Indigenous peoples out there the need for the kind of education they provide is very great

Sources
Anonimous 2006. Butet Manurung The Profile.http://www.ashoka.org [May 15, 2010]
Rokhdian Dodi 2008.Jungle Schools: Valunteers bring alternative education to marginalized communities. http://www.insideindonesia.org/edition-92/jungle-schools [May 15, 2010]
M. Bambang 2003. Butet manurung, Champion of Literacy. The Jakarta Post: Thursday, 11/20/2003.http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2003/11/20/butet-manurung-champion-literacy.html [May 21, 2010]
Tedjasukmana Jason 2004. Butet Manurung A Woman of Letters. http://www.time.com/time/asia/2004/heroes/hbutet_manurung.html [May 21, 2010]
Tuti & Liska 2009. Saur Marlina Manurung. http://www.myhero.com/go/hero.asp?hero=SAUR_MARLINA_MANURUNG_Indonesia