09 Jul 2026Andhika Krishnaloka: Teaching Beyond the Illusion
Some villages are built around rivers. Others around mountains.The Sogoriti Community of Batu seems to orbit around villas.
The villas arrive first. Then come the tourists. Then comes the easy money. And, as often happens with easy money, it quietly changes the way people imagine their futures.
“Why go to school,” some young people ask, “if I can already earn money from home?”
For Andhika Krishnaloka, this question is not simply about education. It is about imagination.
As a community leader in Songgoriti and a field supervisor at the Universitas Brawijaya, Andhika spends much of his time creating spaces where young people can imagine lives beyond the immediate economy of tourism.
Andhika tells young people that the world is still wide. There are still many people to meet, many experiences to have.
This may sound simple. But widening someone’s horizon is not a simple task.
Especially when your village keeps whispering that tomorrow will look exactly like today.
During the pandemic, together with friends from sociology, Andhika helped establish a free community learning space where children learn not only from classrooms, but from rivers, gardens, traditional games, and the landscapes around them.
In a city where playgrounds increasingly become cafés, hotels, and villas, returning to nature becomes, quietly, an act of resistance. Children learn about food security by growing food. They rediscover rivers they had stopped visiting. They play games their grandparents once played. Sometimes the most radical curriculum is simply reminding children that the world is larger than the nearest screen or the nearest tourist. Yet Andhika’s hopes stretch beyond education. He hopes Sogoriti will no longer be defined by the illusion that tourism alone guarantees prosperity. He hopes young people grow confident enough to say where they come from without carrying the weight of stigma. He hopes culture remains something lived rather than something packaged for visitors. Because communities, like gardens, require more than investment. They require care. And perhaps that is Andhika’s quiet lesson: meaningful change rarely begins with grand masterplans. It begins with inviting a young person into a conversation, opening a classroom beneath the trees, or simply reminding someone that the world is still much wider than the view from the nearest villa. Sometimes the greatest journey is not leaving home. It is discovering that home can imagine a different future. https://youtu.be/98ZdwPWga0c?si=KE-TFdJVZ6XGWL7m