One month ago, precisely late July 2017. I’m starting my old passion within facilitating youths whose aged 16-18 years old on behalf of The 9th Indonesia Student Forum (Forum Pelajar Indonesia). This forum was hosted under Indonesia Student and Youth Forum (ISYF), and annually brought around 250 brilliant high school students from across Indonesia to become a change makers.
I know it’s not an easy thing dealing with school kids, they even really great make it to Jakarta after series of selecting phase that our Membership officer done with. There were 5 of us that being trusted as Focus Group Discussion Facilitator, and there are 5 major topics as well. I got “Networking” issue as my case, and honestly for all of the facilitators it was a hard one, compared to nationality or cultural diversity, this topic rarely being discussed by high school student.
What I’ve got to do are enlighten them with the definition of Networking itself, thus helping them to breakdown each factor that causing problem within it. The hardest duty is to make sure no one left behind, in order to giving them their rightful capacity to speak up about the issue in their cases and point of views.
I heard them talk, exposed some ugly truths about networking in educational system, like how nepotism still works and how this thing creates an injustice for several students that supposedly represent their city/province for a national level contest, but they’re being cut off along the process. Thus, being replaced with other who have a significant relationship with the people that in charge.
FGD is mostly around 9 pm and they were really tired after a long day visited Ministry and Corporates, but they still make it to the top. That's amazing!
And being the one in the center, that accumulated that kind of thoughts is a big challenge. How I need to make sure they still heading to the basic of our FGD, but in the same time become a pathway for them to learn from each other cases within the discussion. I though I’ll teach them something, but I ended up learning a lot from their stories, their fresh views, and their Gen Z perspective towards Networking now day.
Welcoming adulthood might sounds boring, but within this great chance to meet so many great people that even younger and less experienced than us is important. This help us a lot to keep upgrading our self, to make sure we stay with the tunes. I personally really proud of kids in my group, they are really brilliant and having a lot of ideas, but the main thing that I'm sure they learnt from their FGD is how they connecting with each other. I hope now they know that each discussion must lead into a single general conclusion that benefit everyone.
Thank you for giving me a better perspective The 9th Indonesia Student Forum!