Citizenship Workshop Magelang 2023
On May 18 up to 22, 2023, VDMI held the first Active Citizenship Workshop in 2023. With the theme “Building Active Citizens for a Sustainable Society Development”, the workshop is located in Magelang, Central Java. Attended by 20 selected grantees. It aimed to provide the VDMI grantees with an understanding of sustainability and social development that can be implemented in the local society.
The first day session was facilitated by Jenny Ratna Suminar, with the topic: “Indonesia and Our Role as Indonesian Youth”. The facts about Indonesia were discussed throughout the session, including the independence dream, the potential that we have in both natural and human resources, and also nowadays’ challenges. An active citizen must have a sense of responsibility to understand the facts about Indonesia and to take a part in the solution. In the next session, participants were asked to do a group visit. Each group was assigned different tasks, such as talking and gathering information about the surrounding potentials or obtaining cash by doing labor/ any assistance to the surrounding neighborhood.
Continuing the learning from day one, day two was focused to explore the internal characters of each participant. Facilitated by Veri Arsanh, the session started with a sharing and discussion about personality types and how it influences our behaviors. In this session, participants also shared about another aspect that contributes to their characters, such as family, personal values and local traditions. Next, the session continued with the preparation for local visit. The head of the village (Kepala Dusun), Bp. Asropil shared about Tingal Wetan, its potential, and current challenges. Then the session continued to discuss social media and its effect on the younger generation. Indra Dwi Prasetyo (Alumnus of Tanjungpura University) and Katharina Stogmuller (Influencer and Writer) that have been working as social media influencers emphasized the key to survive in this digital era: give a distance between social media and real life. The danger of social media explained by Anisa Taqwa Zazi Muslim (Alumna of Hang Tuah University). Bullying, sexual abuse and drug abuse are a real danger that can be found in the social media. To keep ourselves safe from those dangers, we can obtain help or assistance from professional helpers. Next, emotional intelligence was discussed within participants. Understanding strengths and weaknesses is a foundation to build a future career, as well as how to navigate social media for good purposes.
On the day three, the activity was focused to prepare participants to do their role as problem solvers in local communities. This activity is called local exposure, a direct interaction with local people that allows participants to learn about the community, observe the potential and then propose improvement ideas. Understanding the problem-solving framework and its steps become the foundation to do the local exposure. Therefore, participants learned to capture initial data from internet sources, validate the data through observation and interview, create a simple problem statement and desired outcome or result when the problem is solved. At the end of the day, participants have the draft problem statements that will be validated in their interaction with the local people.
The local exposure is the main activity on day four. Participants were deployed to visit communities within the Tingal Wetan Village. There were five groups that visited five different communities: 1). Rengginan bu Yatin; 2). Pak Gombloh, the seller of decorative plants; 3). Tingal Art; 4). Kinnara Kinnari Traditional Dancing Club; and 5). Rik Rok Craft Store and Workshop. Participants have to validate the problem hypothesis with the actual data from observation and interview. After lunch, participants were gathered to process their findings. The foundation to present the findings is to generate alternative solutions using divergent-convergent frameworks.
On the last day, each group presented the result of their research and the alternative solutions. Participants need to put more thorough thinking in formulating the problem statement and generating ideas, so that the ideas or solutions suggested can be more concrete and can be implemented directly in real life. The Rengginan team discovered that Rengginan Bu Yatin doesn’t have proper social media/ online information for their potential customers and they don’t have a formal scheduling system for their employees. The group proposed some caption samples and proposed shift-based scheduling. Pak Gombloh group learned about the operational activities in a decorative plant store and cultivation center. The group highlighted two problems: the need for more capital to build a more extensive cultivation center, and the need to increase the online presence of the place so that it can be found easier by the customers. The team offers several alternatives on how to obtain the capital needed, as well as helping Pak Gombloh to set up a Google Maps point for his place. The Tingal Art group discussed and gathered information from one of the art teachers at Tingalart, as well as several customers. The team highlighted some improvement ideas such as: creating an online catalog of Tingal Art’s products, creating social media content to be uploaded on its Instagram, proposed adding some information plates, some improvements in the clothing store area; e.g. changing room, etc. Kinara Kinari group visited a traditional dancing club/ school. One of the challenges that the group observed is that they might need more mirrors to help the dancers observe and evaluate their moves. The team proposed adding mirrors in the next budgeting cycle of the club.
The Rik-Rok Crafts group visited a craft workshop made of local wooden waste. One of the challenges that they discover is the human resources factor. Almost all Rik-Rok employees are freelance, they also don’t have a neat production or sourcing cycle, so they sometimes face difficulties in fulfilling the orders. The other challenges are from the social media side, where Rik-Rok doesn’t have a consistent online presence. The team then suggested hiring a permanent social media person and creating a production and order procedures/ workflow. In the evening, participants performed some cultural performances from their hometowns as a closing of the program. The five days journey of the twenty selected participants brought learning, experience, and bonding among them. Hopefully these experiences equip them with soft skills that are useful to be active citizens in their own local society. See you in the next Active Citizenship Workshop.
