Project Packaged
Rasya Assegaf
Rasya Assegaf
Project packaged is a public and private campaign in favor of a more sustainable online shopping experience. It's a campaign gunning for the reduction of unnecessary/excessive usage of unsustainable plastic packaging waste in the online marketplace, specifically Tokopedia, as the No,1 eCommerce in Indonesia.
In my private campaign, I wrote a concern letter to Tokopedia. It was a long process of trial and error to write a good letter in a professional writing style, with proper methods. It was similarly a long process to send the letter and receive responses.
In my public campaign, I made a petition, Instagram page, LinkTree, information collection survey, newsletter, and an opened letter from the previously private letter to Tokopedia, the letter I wrote in my private campaign.
Hello! My name is Rasya Assegaf, I am a first-year at Cikal Lebak Bulus High School, I am a sucker for environmental advocacy and a lover of all things environment.
I have always tried to make a change. I joined organizations, I joined meetings, and I joined propositional-based events. I'm passionate about sharing my thoughts and ideas for the betterment of my future earth.
My interest, and frankly, obsession, with the environment, started when I was an itty bitty baby. I vividly remember going to school in 4th grade one day and learning about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP) and its impacts on marine life. I can still feel the fear in my nine-year-old self when my view of adults as superheroes crumbled at knowing their powerlessness to come up with a complete solution.
I wanted to reach Tokopedia to ask and tell them about my concerns about their platform's use of plastic shipping material. I characterized my success by getting a response from Tokopedia. Some important steps in my project were creating a letter, sending it, and ensuring a response from Tokopedia. This project is important to me because I love the environment. My campaign time is honestly ongoing, but for the sake of PP, I was constrained from October to February 2021 - 2022.
During my personal project process, I used many ATL skills, but the one that jumps out to me the most is my constant use of communications skills. A big part of my project is learning to communicate well. Especially through writing. I needed to push myself into different writing styles to fit different needs because I faced many different situations and audiences. I needed to learn how to write professionally, how to write concisely, how to write persuasively, how to write modestly, and how to write approachable.
Communication was genuinely a big part of achieving my learning goal. Because, as I better learned later in my personal project process, advocating in and of itself needs different faces, and how I communicate was a big part of that face. Furthermore, a big part of my final products because all my work dealt with my communicating my ideas and concerns to other people.
It took a really long time for me to be sufficient in communication skills. Every time I sent or published my writing, I had to crosscheck three times by myself and ask for another person's review of my work. Even prior to the actual writing, I needed to research correct formatting and language. Actually, a big part of my investigation time was spent learning about good writing tones.
In my project, I had two forms of research; research for training and research for data. Training consisted of sources that helped me learn how to write well (petitions, open letters, emails, campaigns, etc.), and data consisted of evidence for my writing and background research about the problem (Indonesian eCommerce and effects).
On February the 4th, I conducted a meeting with Najya Hani Assegaf, a 12th-grade Cikal Amri Setu student. She had previously done an Instagram campaign of her own for her personal project, and therefore had the qualifications and experience that I wanted to dig into for my own Instagram campaign. During the meeting with her, I was able to receive feedback, tips, and recommendations to help me make a successful Instagram page and a successful campaign. A big part of the campaign was marketing and how to make people want to read and make people involved in the contents of the campaign.
Private campaign
Plan
Data research
Private survey
Find a way to contact Tokopedia
Write investigation letter to Tokopedia (unanswered)
Training research
Write concern letter
Send the letter
Continue to respond to get a response
Private campaign
Plan
Data research
Training research
Make a LinkTree
Put links
Make forms
Publish letter
Make Instagram posts
Make petition letter
Publish
Publish Instagram posts
Make public
Market LinkTree, Instagram, and petition
Here's my video pitch!
Here's my feedback form!
I faced many challenges when I was doing my PP. However, the biggest challenge was my in-process project changes. Originally, my product was only supposed to be my private campaign; make a letter, send it to Tokopedia, and receive a response. However, at the time, I didn't get a response. So I made a public campaign. This threw me off my plans, and, therefore, it was a big challenge to finish and incorporate into my project.
Personally, having this project gave me confidence. It gave me two types of it. It gave me confidence in my work and that someone as insignificant as me could start and make a real change. It successfully gave it to me, because I stepped out of my comfort zone, with zero expectations, and still came out on top.
I worked a lot with the community. I tried my best to find people and make them engage in my content. And by doing so, I could hear feedback saying that my ideas were possible, important, and something to be concerned about. I think, and I hope, that through my PP, the community came out with more knowledge, concerns, and motivation for changes in eCommerce.
My main plan to sustain the project is to continue my Instagram page and check back on Tokopedia. Frankly, I'm unsatisfied with the answers I received from Tokopedia, so I want to push for more. I think I've proven to myself and my humongous doubts that real change is surprisingly not impossible. So I plan on pushing harder for it.