Youth and Development

Youth and Community Development

In December 2010, I got involved with Habitat for humanity organization project in Sentul areas, Bogor. Habitat for humanity is a non profit organization with the main purpose of helping our low income community, who are less able to build a decent place to live. Habitat organization has been running since 2007 in Indonesia, Mr Budi, as Habitat staff said to me that since 1997 until July 2011, Habitat has been helping 3 thousand family to get a decent places to sleep at night. Habitat also taking care people who lost their houses because natural disaster like earthquakes and tsunami in Aceh.

I got information of Habitat programs from my Japanese colleague who have been active as Habitat volunteer in Indonesia since 2 years. Fact that my Japanese foreign friend have better information about Habitat organization existence in Indonesia was really make me sad, its pushed me to made a few step ahead to introduce Habitat programs to youth generation because I guess not many people notice. Habitat need to raised the fund from personal donator and companies, and to reduce the cost Habitat needs so many active volunteer all over Indonesia. Mr Budi was explaining to me that Habitat need financial support to collecting the fund, then I had an idea to made an article about Habitat organization for Japanese company readers in Indonesia. I have been working in Japanese internal media, so I thought why don’t I used my power for making a few differences, I’m just trying to be agent of change in my small community using small power that I have. Hopefully from my short article about Habitat programs, many Japanese companies in Indonesia are willing to be Habitat donatur as part of their corporate social responsibility programs.

I thought by published a short story about Habitat programs, means that I have already put myself as a functional youth citizen, but I realized that we need more than a million of youth generation to create a better world for low income community, I know that youth generation have a big power, but they are not yet fully aware with power they might have.

In fact, on Habitat sentul project around September - December 2010, I was getting a hard time to faced the fact that most of volunteers were a youth foreigner. I was thinking where Indonesian youth volunteers did go?.

I had found a bitter fact that 100% Habitat volunteers on Sentul project was from youth foreigner, they were coming from International school like Korean international school and Jakarta International school. They were painted the wall, cut the woods, cleaning the windows, put the lamp, put the floor, and after 3 hours working they were made a closing ceremony to gratefull what they did and made a promises to help others even from different nation and social classes. Several volunteer also coming from University exchange student like Japan. It was quite hard and sad to watched that foreigner helped our community while our own youth generation might not knowing the existence of Habitat humanity programs.

I don’t blame anyone with the fact that Indonesian youth generation might have a less information tools, but i was over thinking with the reason behind this. Value that youth foreigner have that we don’t have, we should take a look to international school curriculum system, they have been held social action and social awareness as school subject with credits, student need to make a real contribution to the community to pass that subject. As matter a fact, foreigner student were being pushed to have a social awareness since they were children. I think we need to follow exactly the same, I think its very important to put social action as one of subject since the primary school. National education system should add social activity as one of important subject. We need to create social awareness since they were children.

I have been taking my role by introducing Habitat programs to my youth friends. If we were gathering together, I was pretty sure that we can build a million houses for million low income family all over Indonesia. What been missing from our youth generation was the lack of information for social activity. There for, we need to use internet as a tools to get connected, because todays youth generation have been using internet as part of their life style. We were totally different with 90’s era when the only way to spreading the information was from printed media. In fact, since 2011, 40 million people In Indonesia were using internet every day from their small mobile phones. So I had been posting on my facebook account picture that I taken from Habitat programs. I wrote the description on my facebook about Habitat mission. I was hoping from my 600 hundred facebook friends could seeing what I have been posted, or at least they would be familiar with Habitat organization.

In conclusion, first, I think we need to put social activity as a new subject since in primary school, because we need to create social awareness since they were children, as next youth generation who will make a real contribution for community in the future. Second, government and non profit organization must work together to introduce social programs using internet. We can use major social platform like facebook fan pages, twitter, blogger, kaskus forum, or anything as a new way to reaching youth generation understanding and support.
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