Global Changemakers

The Indonesian’s Life and CAP!

Apa kabar, semuanya? (Read: What’s up, everyone?)

In the past a couple of months, just like what some of you were busy with, I was busy with final exams, college applications, graduation ceremony, prom night, and of course… my CAP!

Here are my thoughts on a lot of things…

On the Guildford Forum…
Guildford was one of the best things in my life. I met 57 inspirational young activists from all around the globe, great mentors and facilitators. What’s best from this was not ‘travelling to London’, it was meeting you all: my new friends. After the last day of Guildford, I became a new person who started seeing the world using a new point of view. I began to care about what exactly happens in the world. Every time I see bad things on the news, I always remember of my friends who live there. Whenever I see war, I want to stop it. Whenever I see disease, I want to cure it. My English is not that good, so I cannot really express my feelings about my experience in Guildford. But, I can assure you that it did change my life.

After you guys went home, I still stayed for one week in the UK because the British Council Indonesia sent me to attend a conference about community cohesion in Manchester, where I met Gabriela again and also Mike Hardy, who was Indonesia’s Country Director. After I was done with the conference, I went back to London and planned to watch The Lion King – my favourite film ever! Before I went to Lyceum Theatre, I got the privilege to meet Indonesian Ambassador for UK, Mr. Yuri Thamrin, at the Indonesian Embassy. He was impressed about my achievements, going to London and all… I don’t know what he will say if he had met you, guys! You guys are all amazing!

When I watched the videos of Guildford, I was sure that we will be the ones who actually change the world. I have faith, in us.

On the London Summit…
I was so excited when they told me that I was going to London again to attend another Global Changemakers event. At first, I was sad because I will only get to meet 3 other people from Guildford, but I actually met more people who are also inspirational from a wide range of backgrounds!

It was a great experience though there was ‘less John’ and ‘no Linda’, but David’s sessions were also awesome. Which made it even better was, we got the chance to meet a few world leaders who are actively involved in the policy making, we met experts of economics including people from the Bank of England, the Economist, we met Cherie Blair, and we met students from UK. I got the chance to learn a lot of things because I actually didn’t understand about economics at all, I also got the chance to know more about the impact of global financial crisis in G20 countries.

I jumped like crazy at InnovationArts when I got a call by the Indonesian Embassy, saying that I could attend a luncheon with the Minister of Foreign Affairs. But, none of you have known that on the day before, when we were at the House of Lords, I spent hours trying to find a way to attend a lecture at London School of Economics by President Yudhoyono. They could not arrange it, so they ‘changed’ it with a luncheon with the Minister instead. So I travelled to the Indonesian Embassy with Gabriela, saw the President passing by but didn’t get the chance to talk to him. The lunch was splendid; there were the Minister (Mr. Hassan Wirajuda), the Ambassador, and the President’s Spokesperson/Special Staff for Foreign Affairs (Dr. Dino Patti Djalal–who was also my idol because he wrote an amazing book). Yet finally, the Minister asked me one big thing: “Don’t you want to meet the President? Just go with Dino and meet him.” I was… HELL YEAH!!!

I did finally meet the President. But, it was a short meeting like what we did with Gordon Brown and Felipe Calderon, so I didn’t get the chance to express my aspirations either. What changed my life was the chance to meet Dr. Djalal.

In Jakarta…
Dr. Djalal invited me to attend a lot of meetings. He is one of the core founders of Modernisator (meaning: Modernizers; www.modernisator.org), a non-profit organization which works on youth empowerment and aim to make a new passionate generation of Indonesia. Through Modernisator’s events, I got the chance to meet a lot of people who are willing to support my CAP. The Minister of Trade even already became the patron of my CAP. People in Indonesia got to know me because of the publicity done by Dr. Djalal’s people. Dr. Djalal himself introduced and told people about me in a seminar about Indonesian economists visit to G20 and about the G20 itself. They also screened an interview with me at the launching of a book about President Yudhoyono called “Energi Positif: Opini 100 Tokoh tentang Indonesia di Era SBY” (Positive Energy: 100 People’s Opinion about Indonesia on SBY’s Era). It simply opened a lot of doors for me in Indonesia.

On my CAP…
My CAP is going to be the first ever Indonesian Youth Conference, which hopefully will be held in July 2010. We will invite 33 people to Jakarta for a one week forum (just like what we did in Guildford) where we are going to give general workshops about leadership, networking, teamwork, fundraising, media, public speaking, etc. We will also give specific workshops about certain issues, which are environment, education and social (including health and poverty). The participants will have to be high school students, because, I want this pilot-project to be more focused. It will still have a wide range of backgrounds because each of them will represent each province in Indonesia (we have 33 provinces).

We have worked since May 2009 through our own homes to tell more people about this initiative. I use free effective platforms: Twitter and Facebook. In one month, we have already gained more than 8,000 fans on Facebook. I hope it will help me later when I am going to engage sponsors. I believe sponsor will have faith in us once we have showed them: “Hey I’ve done this and that.” You get it, right?

We already have two printed media at the moment as our media partners, which are the Jakarta Globe and Provoke! We are also going to hold pre-events, including essay competition about Indonesian media’s role in shaping Indonesian youth’s character with the Jakarta Globe; a creative entrepreneurship workshop called ‘Creativity Craze!’ with Provoke! (which is going to involve two International Young Creative Award Champions: Yoris Sebastian (creative entrepreneur) and Oscar Lawalata (fashion designer); and Sitta Karina, a writer who had authored more than 10 best-selling books); and a seminar about “Internationalism as an Extension of Nationalism” with Dr. Dino Patti Djalal himself and Modernisator.

We are going to launch our website soon, hopefully on International Youth Day. Just wish me luck and there will be much more updates coming, peeps!

- Alanda Kariza