The program was initially proposed twelve years ago when the condition of teenagers started to descent. Due to the adverse global impacts of information and technology, teenagers have a tendency of doing some juvenile activities that can bring them to ruins such as students’ brawls, drug abuse, free-sex, watching porn films, and many more. As those obviously destructive activities can cause a doomsday not only to the teenagers in person but also to the next generation of a nation, the former President of Indonesia, Soeharto, spontaneously promoted a program called Pesantren Kilat where the students can have a fruitfull activity that can shift their tendency from defocusing ones. Most of the high schools in Indonesia, including Labschool Jakarta enthusiastically responded to the idea.

At first, the Pesantren Kilat was strongly targeted on the religious activities. The students were having Quran recital, doing prayers as well as listening to religious lectures. For Labschool, this activity really fits our school motto, Iman, Ilmu, Amal—Faith, Knowledge, Good Deed. But to meet our vision more perfectly, since 1997 we started to improvise the program and widen the topic to the science and social activities as well. We also began inviting students from other schools in Indonesia, especially those with different cultural and religious background.

Since then we also started working jointly with two prominent institutions, they are the Indonesian Navy, the office of State-Ministry of Youth and Sport as well as the Directorate of High School Development. Marine affairs also become our important program in the schedule. And being held on one of the Indonesian Navy’s battle ships unpredictably raised the interest of the participants from other schools and invited more and more joining BTPI.

Besides preserving the programs on marine affairs and women empowerment, this year we come up with an idea of having specific program on multi-faith and multi-cultural as this has become an actual issue, particularly in our country. And hopefully, through this program, we can raise the teenagers’ awareness of the importance of respecting different background. (more... go to menu download)