It was a beautiful sunny day; I went to an English Speaking Club at The English House Medan to join a discussion about social entrepreneur. This time the speaker was Mr.Panut Hadisiwoyo, the founder of Orangutan Information Center (OIC), a non-profit organisation (NGO) which works on saving orangutan in Indonesia. Actually, I have ever met him before at Siti Hajar School; at that time our school also joined the activities provided by OIC; the students and teachers-including me-went together to observe and learn about forest restoration in the middle of Besitang forest. Yet, he also remembered about me and we have a little discussion before the talk began.
 |
| picture source: Start-Up Hyderabad |
The talk is about social entrepreneur, a topic that I never knew before, which is defined as someone who offers new innovation and ideas for the benefit of many people. Mr. Panut said that his idea to become social entrepreneur came up when he went to Canada where he could see that the country is developed since everyone participates to do something for the country. So then, he started to think to make something related to social change in our lovely country, Indonesia. He likes orangutan very much, the activities to help orangutan should be very interesting for him since he had a principle: Do what you love and love what you do.
Based on his talk, social entrepreneur exists due to the challenges in society, such as poverty and teenager problems; the development of technology-the vast use of social media, for instance; and an interest in social innovation. Since there are many aspects needing an innovation in Indonesia, many social entrepreneurs are necessary needed. However, the knowledge about social entrepreneur is still limited and less explored; therefore, it is very good way to introduce to the people about it and also encourage them to start to think to make one.
How to get started to be a social entrepreneur? Firstly, we need to grow our innovation, it is a quite difficult though if we do not have any interest to change something in the society. So, we can start from what we like. In that discussion, everyone started to mention the social change they want based on what they like. The one that likes to teach chemistry wanted to make an institute to demolish the thinking that chemistry is difficult. It is also a good idea to start with. We can try to think this way: Do what we love; solve the social problem related to it.
After that, we can start to build a project and make a proposal; remember that we need to write our idea to keep it in our mind, otherwise it will vanish quickly.
After that, we can start to build a project and make a proposal; remember that we need to write our idea to keep it in our mind, otherwise it will vanish quickly.
The next step is to make a strategy, we can try to find many organisations that related to our idea or similar to it. Finding more information about the people who work in the similar area and make connection to them, so then we can find the first funding source.
After getting the connection and funding, we need to take action directly based on what we had proposed; also we need to explore the trend in the society and make innovation. This step is one of the main point in becoming a successful social entrepreneur because it determines our willing whether we are serious or not. The action need to be finished totally so then we can give the results to the one who gave us funding. This is important point to keep our NGO; otherwise, people will not believe our NGO anymore, soon it will be vanished.
Mr. Panut also gave the example based on his experience, orangutan case. At that time he found that the problems involved in orangutan were the conflict between human and orangutan and the poaching. So then, he tried to find the connection to the people who work on the similar things and to find the funding source. Finally, he found a man (not an Indonesian, but I forgot his nationality) that give him some money. And, he directly took many actions: to rescue some suffered orangutans in the forest, to educate people about the important of environment (by making some activities for students and providing mobile library), to make community empowerment, and to do forest restoration. It is very amazing that he can keep this NGO until now; besides, his organisation now has 60 employees. It is started from his love to orangutan.
From his story and his talk, it really charges me again to do something small to develop Indonesia and I guess Indonesia actually really needs a lot of social entrepreneurs. I do want to be one of them so then I wrote it down here, and I hope this short article can brings this up to people mind to be a social entrepreneur as well.
For more information about OIC, you can have here: OIC website and for more interesting discussions in English, The English House Medan always provides very good talk in English every Saturdays 10 pm, find out more here: The English House Medan
 |
| Mr. Panut and orangutan ( save orangutan action); pic.source: Orangutan Outreach |
Mr. Panut also gave the example based on his experience, orangutan case. At that time he found that the problems involved in orangutan were the conflict between human and orangutan and the poaching. So then, he tried to find the connection to the people who work on the similar things and to find the funding source. Finally, he found a man (not an Indonesian, but I forgot his nationality) that give him some money. And, he directly took many actions: to rescue some suffered orangutans in the forest, to educate people about the important of environment (by making some activities for students and providing mobile library), to make community empowerment, and to do forest restoration. It is very amazing that he can keep this NGO until now; besides, his organisation now has 60 employees. It is started from his love to orangutan.
From his story and his talk, it really charges me again to do something small to develop Indonesia and I guess Indonesia actually really needs a lot of social entrepreneurs. I do want to be one of them so then I wrote it down here, and I hope this short article can brings this up to people mind to be a social entrepreneur as well.
For more information about OIC, you can have here: OIC website and for more interesting discussions in English, The English House Medan always provides very good talk in English every Saturdays 10 pm, find out more here: The English House Medan
Comments
Post a Comment