Education Can Be The Key To Poverty Reduction, Says The Presidential Special Staff

Special Staff to the President for Education and Innovation Gracia Josaphat Jobel Mambrasar or known as Billy Mambrasar (center). (Photo via Antara)

JAKARTA - Education can be the key to poverty alleviation. This is a view that the President's Special Staff for Education and Innovation, Gracia Josaphat Jobel Mambrasar, or known as Billy Mambrasar.

Not without basis. Billy has proven that through education every community can definitely alleviate poverty.

"I believe, the right way to get out of poverty is with education," he said in a written statement, Saturday, May 20.

Billy is the birth of the Yapen Islands, Papua Province. No one thought he was able to step into the Palace.

However, with education, Billy proved that nothing was impossible to achieve. From Papua, he then set foot in the United States and also the Palace.

The experience of living as a Papuan child made Billy able to catch various social problems in society, especially limited access to education and economic constraints.

This is behind his initiative to establish the Kitongbisa Foundation which focuses on underprivileged education and entrepreneurship development.

"Here, inequality and economic inequality are the main problems," he said, as reported by Antara.

Various achievements and breakthroughs in social activities in Papua have made Billy trusted by President Joko Widodo to become the President's Special Staff. Through the opportunity he got with this position, Billy expanded his role by establishing a non-formal learning center, entrepreneurship, and empowerment of millennial farmers that reaches millions of people.

He also advised all scholarship winners of the Tanoto Foundation to work together and create a bigger multiplier effect for the Indonesian people.

"Only one person can have such a big impact. Especially if fellow alumni of the Tanoto Foundation scholarship work together, they will be able to make a bigger multiplier effect," said Billy Mambrasar.