Empowering disadvantaged young people in Indonesia

YCM is my life and my love My name is Kohar, the Youth Project Coordinator at YCM. I’m the 4th from 6 siblings, 2 older brothers, 1 sister and 2 younger brothers. When I finished my study in the elementary school, I thought I can’t continue my study to junior school, because my father who was a casual labor in the morning and a security guard at night, only could earned enough money for our daily needs. He tried his best to let me continue my education to the junior high school with the help from our generous neighbor. When I was about 13 years old (second grade in junior high school), my father passed away because of an accident. He fell from a tree when he worked to cut my neighbor’s tree. I thought life is so unfair…my father the breadwinner of the family could no longer support us. My mom had to work as a helper for a neighbor, since my father passed away, she was the only one who earned money for our lives! My brothers and I had to quit from school. Education is a luxury thing for us, we could not afford it. We decided to help our mother to survive. We did some various jobs such as rubbish collector for the neighbors, selling bread around our village, worked as a dish washer in a local restaurant, washed our neighbor’s car, and the last worked at a neighbor’s house as a tobacco’s roller to make them into cigarettes. In 2005, I heard about Yayasan Cipta Mandiri (YCM) from a neighbor. My brothers and I decided to join the organization, which before I did not believe what the people said that we could learn there for free, not a single rupiah to join the activities at YCM. We eagerly learned many things at YCM. English, computer, gain self-confidence, dare to dream big and to achieve them, sharpen our talents and also networking. In 2010, another challenge happened to my family, my mom got seriously injured until now. She can’t walk because of an accident, a public transport that she took when she went to a traditional market with my sister crushed by a fallen tree on the side walk. Her back bone was the worst part that injured, and it makes her feet can’t support her body anymore. I’m proud to be a son of the strongest and the toughest mother in the world, who always support her children to be the better one. It is already 14 years I join YCM. YCM changes my life with the knowledge that I get every day, with the people who are supporting each other, and with all the opportunities that I get to improve my skills. I got scholarship to continue my education into a package school, looks similar with formal high school, but the schedule only 3 or 4 times in a week for a year and I graduated from the package school with some others YCM students. Different with my youngers, I am more interested to learn computer more, so when I got a chance to take a computer course and I was so excited. I learned web design and web programing for 5 months and 1 month learned computer technical and I also self-taught learning through the internet and I am happy because I can share my knowledge to the students at YCM. In 2011 was one of my best year, because I got a chance to make one of my dream comes true. Stepped my feet to another country. Through a simple program that YCM, former volunteers and one school in Australia, I did observation in a school for a month, learning, practicing what were the differences between Indonesia and Australia’s school program. I also shared about YCM to all the people whom I met with and when I returned to Indonesia, I shared my experiences as a motivational story for family, friends and students at YCM. Beside as one of the YCM management core team now, I am also responsible for our website maintenance, YCM online crowd funding like GlobalGiving, YCM social media, computer maintenance, English classes, helping the volunteers when they need to extend their visa and some other administrations works base on my abilities. I cannot mention all things that YCM have given to me to let me be a better person. I love what I learn and what I do at YCM as my second home where the staffs, students and all people at YCM are my family.

Links:

• Our official website