Youth Empowerment in Community

Youth and community are two things which related each other. When we talk about youth, we talk about community too, because youth is part of communities. As youth who have a high motivation, we can contribute in some activities actively. As youth engage in more sustained positive relationships with adults, other youth, and community organizations, they would learn that they are valued citizens of their communities. Such collaborations would lead to skill enhancement; confidences building traits and ownership which would help them for prepare their future. By facilitating interaction and developing relationships, these diverse individuals are interacting and begin to mutually understand common needs. Consistent interaction and channels of communication can be established and maintained, increases in local adaptive capacities materialize and community can emerge.

            When you involve in some organizational activities or communities involvement you should give contributions are your knowledge, your energy, your time and your commitment. For community involvement, it does not merely we should contribute our financial, because based on my experience when I did some organizational activities or community involvement, the most important thing that you should have is commitment. When you commit with your decision before, you will go ahead with some problems might come face to you. At young age, youths have power to generate new idea to solve problems of society, so it likes the real contribution which youth can contribute to their society.

            In my campus, Sampoerna School of Education we have the same vision and mission. Some activities which designed by my campus is always related and integrated with each other, we called as “Back to community”. It means our activities should have main purpose toward community, such as those activities that we have done were Tendean and Pancoran Clean-up, Community Service (CS) and Social Activity (SA). For the first activity was activity in my campus to clean up on the street. Why are the name Tendean and Pancoran? Because, at the time my campus located in Tendean, so that is why we were clean up around our campus in Tendean. But now, my campus has already moved to Pancoran, so that is why we have changed the name became Pancoran clean-up with the same activities. We did clean up on the street, we made biopori hole, we did street campaign for earth hour event in last months ago. It made us to have more awareness with our environment, with our earth, because we can start to save our earth with the simplest thing like clean up on the street. So, we can call those activities as a youth empowerment in community and society.

Community Service

The second event was Community Service (CS). CS is an event which designed to community development especially for elementary students to encourage students' interest in reading. So, we tried to give their training how to encourage their interest to reading. We provided trainers who have already got TOT (Training for Trainer) before, we provided some books for them and made mini library in their classes. They were interested and excited.  In this event, we tried to give our spirit and our knowledge to them to keep reading and make a reading as a habit.

The last event was Social Activity (SA). SA is an event which designed to give back to our community and society, it means “back to community” to give and contribute something. Our theme last year was “DICE (Difable Children Empowerment) Workshop and Festival”. So we focused on difable children are Tunadaksa and Celebral Palsy students who school at YPAC (Yayasan Pembinaan Anak Cacat) Jakarta. In this event hold on the 2^nd and 3^rd of December 2011 consist of some sub-events were DICE Workshop: “Karena Kamu dan Aku Bisa”, “Education for all: Special Education for Special Children” and DICE Festival. We also invited some speakers were Leo AFI (UNESCO), Bpk. Saharudin (Perwakilan Komnas HAM) dan Bpk. Boy Siahaan (Annoucer) and some communities engaged there were Komunitas Talang, Komunitas Line Magic Community, Komunitas GCC, Komnitas Youth Health dan Komuitas Dongeng Kanvas. We got sponsor from Koperasi Siswa Bangsa, Pulau Intan, Suara Jakarta, Yayasan Habibie Afsyah, Youth Desk, Komnas HAM, Indonesia Youth Health, Global Citizen Corps dan Forum for Indonesia. So, in this event we gave knowledge about special needs

Social Activity 2011

students (how their education) to others, we gave full motivation and support to special needs students to keep struggle with their life later on and gave them a chance to perform their creativities like singing, dancing, playing music, etc.

            So, I can conclude that when you involved in some organizational activities or community involvement, you will get some things, like personal self-growth, skill enhancement, and leadership development. Allow youth to work with adults in active collaboration toward local community development. Integrating youth into committees with adults as mentors and guides will enable them to build the leadership skills and personal characteristics necessary for their future adult involvement. Finally, activeness in the community is facilitated by youth participation in community-based groups. Interaction between social groups promotes awareness of needs and helps identify volunteer opportunities to caring each other.

Documentation: Writer's collection and oursummerfield.info