The Partnership of Students and the Manager of Rumah Pintar
(Community Learning Center) in Building the Community
Empowerment
Viena Rusmiati Hasanah, Nita Fauziah, Yanti Shantini, Iip Saripah, Pipin Tresnawati and Lilis
Widaningsih
Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia
Keywords: Partnerships, Manager, Student, Rumah Pintar, Community Empowerment.
Abstract: The purpose of this study is to describe the partnership students and manager Rumah Pintar in building
community empowerment. The method used in this research is descriptive research method with qualitative
approach. The techniques used in this research are interview, observation and documentation study.
Subjects in this study amounted to five people, namely managers, students and learners. The results of this
study indicate that the partnership between students with Rumah Pintar includes: 1. Collaborative activities
in facilitating the community to learn at Rumah Pintar Al Barokah, they are social animation activities,
mediation and negotiation, support, consensus building, group facilitation, utilization of various skills and
resources, and organizing 2. Collaborative activities in educating the community for awareness raising,
providing information, confrontation and training 3. Collaborative activities in the function of representation
to build networks with resources outside Rumah Pintar Al Barokah 4. Collaborative technical activities
undertaken i.e. management, using computers, as well as verbal and written presentations, while technical
activities that have not been done are financial arrangements. The conclusion of the research result is
student partnership through PLS UPI laboratory and managers produce multi effect positive effect for
students to increase their competence and society around Rumah Pintar. The implication is that this
partnership needs to be continued and optimized for its benefits.
1 INTRODUCTION
Student partnership through Out-of-School
Education Laboratory of Universitas Pendidikan
Indonesia, with Rumah Pintar Al Barokah has been
conducted since the establishment of Rumah Pintar
in 2013, especially with Education figure, the qolbu
teacher, Een Sukaesih (alm). Partnership between
the two sides to date continues to be built and
developed. Based on her message, UPI must
continue to assist and build Rumah Pintar Al
Barokah Ua Een Sukaesih in order to be well-
managed.
Partnership is derived from the roots of the
partner. Partner can be translated as "spouse, soul
mate, alliance, or campaign". The meaning of the
partnership is translated into fellowship or alliance.
Starting from here, the partnership can be interpreted
as a form of alliance between two or more parties
that form a bond of cooperation on the basis of
agreement and mutual need in order to increase the
capacity and capability in a particular field of
business, or a certain purpose, so as to obtain good
results. (Sulistiyani, 2004).
Rumah Pintar is a place of public education
service to establish the society who love to learn
(Learning Society). Community involvement and
participation in community building is the key to
create the prosperity. Rumah Pintar Al Barokah aims
to become one of the Institutions that can facilitate
and accommodate the needs of the community in
building itself. The manager Rumah Pintar Al
Barokah becomes a change agent who is expected to
contribute while UPI, who present to accompany the
establishment of Rumah Pintar from the beginning,
through the role of students intend to participate
together in facilitating and also teaching students in
building community empowerment. In its role, the
manager of Rumah Pintar is responsible for
educating and empowering the community. Jim Ife
366
Hasanah, V., Fauziah, N., Shantini, Y., Saripah, I., Tresnawati, P. and Widaningsih, L.
The Partnership of Students and the Manager of Rumah Pintar (Community Learning Center) in Building the Community Empowerment.
In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Educational Sciences (ICES 2017) - Volume 2, pages 366-369
ISBN: 978-989-758-314-8
Copyright © 2018 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved

formulates 4 classes of community work, namely
facilitative roles, educational roles, representational
roles, and technical roles. In each group there are
several tasks (capabilities) that must be owned by
community workers. The role or skill of facilitating
or can be called the task of facilitation, which is
building the process of community activities has
several tasks, including social animation, mediation
and negotiation, support, consensus building, group
facilitation, utilization of various skills and
resources, and organizing. The partnership of
Rumah Pintar’ managers with UPI students becomes
an interesting thing to be expressed in this study.
Based on the description above, the authors want
to examine about student partnerships in the UPI
Community Education laboratory and the manager
of Rumah Pintar in doing Education and community
empowerment tasks. With the formulation of
research problems as follows 1. How is the
collaborative activity of students and managers in
facilitating the community to study at Rumah Pintar
Al Barokah? 2. How is the collaborative activity of
students in educating the managers at Rumah Pintar
Al Barokah? 3. How is the collaborative activity of
students and managers in the representation made by
managers in building networks with resources
outside Rumah Pintar Al Barokah? 4. How is the
collaborative activity of students and managers in
technical activities undertaken by managers in
Rumah Pintar Al Barokah as center of learning and
community empowerment?
2 RESEARCH METHOD
This research uses qualitative approach by using
descriptive method. The subjects for this research
are 5 people, namely the manager of Rumah Pintar,
tutor, student resident, university student and a
representative of society. Data collection techniques
used by researchers in this study are interview,
observation and documentation studies. Data
analysis using three stages, they are reduction,
display and verification.
3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Student partnership and manager of Rumah Pintar
Al Barokah include:
3.1 Collaborative Activities with
Students and Manager in
Facilitating the Community to
Study at Rumah Pintar Al Barokah
Manager has provided support for others. Provision
of support is done by each manager at Rumah Pintar
in helping the community to study at Rumah Pintar.
Support done by the manager aims to make people
learn and work so they can grow. Manager of Smart
House is very open and provides support for anyone
and from anywhere to learn as well as the figure of
Ms. Een Sukaesih becomes an inspiration to
continue learning and doing positive things. Ife and
Frank (2008: 559-562) suggest the ability to inspire,
excite, activate, stimulate, move and motivate others
to take action. A person working as a community
worker should be able to get others to participate in
various community activities (see in figure 1).
Figure 1: Students are involved in facilitating the
community through activities in the center.
In the case of group facilitation which is
conducted by the manager of Rumah Pintar Al
Barokah is to offer and invite and collect the groups
that lack of or do not have learning facilities and
infrastructure to join and use the facilities and
infrastructure available in Rumah Pintar. Some
groups that have been facilitated include Qasidah,
PAUD students, and MTs students.
Manager create the children to sing and dance.
The manager of Rumah Pintar can be inferred to
have utilized the various skills and resources as
proposed by Ife and Frank (2008: 575) where a
community worker should be able to identify and
utilize the various skills and resources that exist with
the community or groups. Community workers
should be sensitive to resources and facilities that
have not been utilized or fully utilized.
The Partnership of Students and the Manager of Rumah Pintar (Community Learning Center) in Building the Community Empowerment
367

3.2 Collaborative Educating Activities
by the Managers of Rumah Pintar
Al Barokah and UPI students
The manager and UPI students stimulate, motivate
and provide direction and input to the learning
community to continue to learn and follow the
activities and learning in Rumah Pintar. Awareness
raising activities are conducted orally, which are
carried out by inserting activities at the time of the
learning schedule or break time. Activities provide
information related to Rumah Pintar performed by
managers either directly or indirectly like using
communication media. The information conveyed is
usually about activities in Rumah Pintar and
activities outside Rumah Pintar such as notice of
learning schedule or activities, invitations or
competitions that can be followed by student
resident. Based on the characteristics presented by
Ife and Frank (2008: 583) then the manager of
Rumah Pintar has done the awareness raising
activities and provide information.
Confrontation is the ability to act decisively
when necessary against individuals or groups of
people who violate a principle of cooperation.
Confrontation or assertiveness is always trying to be
done by the manager at Rumah Pintar, but the
learning community has not felt the firmness in
discipline. Managers provide the usual assertiveness
on the learning schedule but there are still learning
residents who ignore the manager. Assertiveness of
manager is usually delivered orally by advising
citizens to learn not to make mistakes again. Figure
2 shows the training of making accessories from
recycled stuffs.
Figure 2: Training of making accessories from recycled
stuffs.
Training is the most specific educative role.
According to Ife and Frank (2008), the training here
is to conduct or link the community with other
trainers to the knowledge and skills transfer
activities required (requested) by the community.
Manager of Rumah Pintar explained that the training
activities that have been done at Rumah Pintar in the
idea by the outside party in cooperation with the
manager. In this activity the manager facilitates and
codes the training activities undertaken. It can be
concluded that the manager has conducted training
activities as a specific educative role.
3.3 Collaborative Activities of Students
and Manager in Representation in
Building Networks with Resources
Outside Rumah Pintar Al Barokah
Obtaining resources is an activity to facilitate
cooperation with institutions outside the community
that have certain resources. The Manager of Rumah
Pintar carries out the connecting duty to build
network with resources outside Rumah Pintar in
order to find and add resources or donations. The
steps taken by managers in obtaining resources as
partners is to search and identify to obtain related
resources and can contribute with Rumah Pintar,
then the managers approach and lobby to participate
and contribute in Rumah Pintar. So, it can be
concluded that the manager has done activities to
obtain resources at Rumah Pintar Al Barokah.
Community workers publish the activities,
processes, and achievements to become community
agendas. The Manager of Rumah Pintar in this case
has been using the media for the development of
communication in order to build a network is done
by using blogs and twitter. The use of media has
received a response from several parties so that the
partners of Rumah Pintar Al Barokah are increasing.
Conceptually, public relations and public
presentation is the ability to make various public
presentation. Community workers provide
information on activities, processes and
achievements to gain the support of various parties.
The Manager becomes public relations and make a
personal public presentation conducted on several
occasions for example if you meet or stay together
with parties from outside Rumah Pintar. Therefore,
the public relation and public presentation have been
done by the manager of Rumah Pintar Al Barokah.
The working network in Ife and Frank (2008:
600) mentioned means establishing relationships
with diverse people, and being able to use them to
ICES 2017 - 1st International Conference on Educational Sciences
368

bring about change. Network as an activity to
develop relationships with various parties to support
the program. The manager of Rumah Pintar has done
the job of networking by building a personal
network to support programs or activities in Rumah
Pintar Al Barokah. Although the job network
seeking is personal, but to date there is a great deal
of partnership involving governments and the
private sector and certain communities or groups.
The manager and UPI students are sharing
experiences and knowledge on Rumah Pintar to
build networking. Wherever and whenever, if there
is opportunity, the manager always personally tries
to build a network by sharing experiences and
knowledge about Rumah Pintar to outsiders. This
sharing of experience and knowledge is expected to
make the listener interested in contributing to
Rumah Pintar. Therefore, managers have shared
experiences and knowledge in accordance with the
conceptual of community workers that is as
facilitator of learning process between parties either
formally or informally.
3.4 Collaborative Activities of the
Manager and UPI Students in
Technical Activities as Learning
Center and Community
Empowerment
Form of management activity is the main activity
undertaken by the manager of Rumah Pintar Al
Barokah. Rumah Pintar Management is under the
responsibility of the education field of Al Barokah
Foundation Een Sukaesih which was formed in April
2015 so it can be said that the transition phase from
the previous management so that until now the
improvement and development are still being done.
The working mechanism of Rumah Pintar is that the
chairman is responsible to the foundation. Besides,
the chairman organizes, mobilize and coach the
manager and tutor. Meanwhile the manager of the
center and the tutor are responsible to the chairman
in terms of learning activities or programs
implemented at each center. However, before being
responsible to the head tutor, the chairman is
responsible to the manager of the center.
Ife and Frank (2008) mention some of the
management activities of staff performance
appraisal, building an effective team, helping an
organization to define its goals and objectives,
deciding on an adequate allocation of
responsibilities within an organization, ensuring
good communication between different people, deal
with conflicts and tensions, and ensure that proper
authorization is obtained before decisions are made
(especially those involving money). But in the next
paragraph it is mentioned that the community-based
organization of the process is done very differently
when it is compared to a large conventional
organization, but the role of management remains
important.
4 CONCLUSIONS
Collaborative activities between manager and
students through UPI Out-of-School Education
Laboratory in empowering the community around
Rumah Pintar Al Barokah keep on having
development. Students through courses and
assignments eventually make the lab site of Smart
House Al Barokah as a place to practice while
providing benefits for the community. The
established partnership still leaves some problems
related to the baton and the commitment of the
students to be able to engage in more focused and
serious partnership with the manager.
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Djohani, R., 2003. Partisipasi, Pemberdayaan dan
Demokratisasi Komunitas, Studio Driya Media.
Bandung.
Ife, J., Frank, T., 2008. Alternatif Pengembangan
Masyarakat di Era Globalisasi: Community
Development, Pustaka Pelajar, Yogyakarta.
Sudjana, S., 2010. Manajemen Program Pendidikan Untuk
Pendidikan Nonformal, Falah Production. Bandung.
Sulistiyani, A., 2004. Kemitraan dan Model-Model
Pemberdayaan, Gaya Media. Yogyakarta.
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