The Analysis of Early Childhood’s Intervention Strategies in Balim Valley, Papua: Are They Culturally Appropriate?

In this paper I analyse how the culturally driven intervention strategies in the community of Balim Valley, Papua, focusing on the early childhood stage. I view child-rearing practices through Development Niche concept and it should seek from the cultural approach based on in where the children grow and develop. This theoretical framework leads to the hypothesis that understanding the local and cultural child-rearing practices can help examine and provide a clear understanding of government’s and NGO’s early childhood intervention strategies in Balim Valley. I predict that there is variety of valuable culture in the community that give benefit to the early childhood development process throughout child-rearing practices. I explore PAUD program organized by the Indonesian government, and Pena Emas/Honai Anak organized by WVI in Wamena. Both of the programs have similar fundamental perspective which is ECCD concept but in reality, there are some challenges that cause some difficulties in the program’s implementation. The lack of notion of community participation has emerged as well as the lack of awareness of the substance of ECCD perspective. Regarding to the challenges, recommendation are provided based on the interplay among external and internal actors of the intervention strategies. Some recommendations are for instance, assessment as the first stage to understand the socio-cultural settings of the community context, taking into account the notion of standardization and decentralization, and facilitating local organizers in terms of the degree of ownership. This analysis produces a better understanding of the specific role of the state, NGO and community to intervene in the child development in order to invest for a better future for the new generation in Balim Valley. The recommendation implies that there is an urgent need for a dialog among the actors in order to develop the framework of early childhood’s intervention strategies in Balim Valley.