Community Outreach

MITRA was established back in 2013 by some undergraduate students including myself from Nusa Cendana University in Kupang with a shared passion to disseminate useful information in youth development and opportunities to other young people through mentoring program, series of public seminars, and social gathering. Our activities center around three pillars (education, environment, and international relations). Throughout the years, our communities have been reaching other universities in the surrounding area and in Papua. Our activities are well-documented through our blog and social media. 

Established around December 2014, AIYA Eastern Indonesian chapter is one of the latest establishment of local AIYA chapters in Indonesia. AIYA is a youth-led association based in Indonesia and Australia that aims to connect young people from both nations with shared interests. AIYA's motto is to connect, inform and inspire. Our activities are well-documented through the website and social media

Beyond borders initiative was a self-led initiative that I started with a few friends during COVID-19 pandemic. It consisted of open-for-public series of web seminars and online discussions through WhatsApp groups. The initiative aimed to assist young Indonesian scholars to choose their academic field, university, and future goals. We invited guests to present and lead discussion with attending participants. Topics varied from law and international relations to mathematics and statistics. 

Kelas Daring IELTS NTT is an initiative for online open-access and guided IELTS learning experience for local community in East Nusa Tenggara region. As we know, English proficiency test is one of the requirements for applying to higher education institutions where english is the primary language. Oftentimes, this is a big hurdle for many applicants from non-English speaking countries (especially developing countries). This test is also very expensive to most people there. As of 2024, one official IELTS test costs around USD 280 - USD 340. That means, you have to be fully-prepared to avoid taking the test multiple times to pass the passing grade. This brings another challenge to people from disadvantaged regions since private IELTS learning institutions are very rare and expensive. 

This initiative aims to bridge this gap by providing a free access to guided IELTS learning experience for our community from mentors that already have prior experience on this test and are willing to share freely. Learn more about our initiative through our website.

As quoted, the Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative (YSEALI) is U.S. government’s signature program to strengthen leadership development and networking in Southeast Asia that was launched in 2013. I participated in the fall 2016 YSEALI Academic fellowship program for an intensive and rewarding 5-week experience at Northern Illinois University to learn more about community engagement. You can see some of the experience through this link. 

As the community grows, I had an opportunity to attend the 2019 YSEALI summit that brought together all YSEALI alumni from other Southeast Asia nations in Phuket-Thailand. During the summit, we were awarded a seed grant of USD 3,000 to start a project "Identify Identity" to raise community awareness of undocumented children (children without proper legal documents) in Sabah, Malaysia.

Young Leaders for Indonesia (YLI) is is an intensive leadership development program initiated by McKinsey & Company Indonesia in 2008. I was part of its batch VII program that ran in 2015. During the 6-month long workshop in Jakarta, we had opportunity to learn and build our leadership skills through various training modules and hands-on experience (internships and networking). I wrote an article about my experience with the program, which can be found here.

University Building Relationship through Intercultural Dialogue and Growing Engagement (UniBRIDGE) is Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) funded project that was established in late 2012. It was the only university-level BRIDGE project in Indonesia. It aimed to promote language and cultural learning experience through direct interactions between Indonesian and Australian university students. Australian students gained cultural and language knowledge from their Indonesian student counterpart, and vice versa. 

I was a participant and student-mentor in this project from 2014 to 2015. If interested, further reading about this project is available here.