Today (13/8), YCAB turns eighteen. Just like a child marching into the adulthood, it means that time has come for you to leave behind your childishness. It is time to grow up. Time to take up new responsibility. Time to think seriously of what to build in the next phase of your life.
The next phase of your life is determined by what and how you do in the university you enroll in. Some choose to party throughout and fail, some study and excel. Yet there’s another group who party and study as hard and excel at both. What I opt for my kids is the latter. And that, I wish for you too.
Now imagine YCAB as a life long university that you’ve enrolled in at some point of your life. There are those who just joined us and came as freshmen, and those who are already in more senior years. All I want is for all of you is to have fun while getting your degree in doing good; a degree that only God will bestow upon you when you are before Him.
Doing good is the one ingredient that unites us; unites us to stick together and to give our best. If there’s one prerequisite that this university of YCAB will ask you it to present goodness in all your speech and deeds, towards your fellow students and people around the university campus. Being an extension of God’s goodness to this world is the one thing that should run through your veins. And what’s unique about this blood of goodness, it doesn’t only give you life but it gives life outside of you.
Imagine if YCAB is never founded, there will be more than three million youths would have left with no opportunity to make smart decisions, continue education or gain skills. There will be thousands of youths graduating without jobs. There will be a hundred thousand families left with less income. There will be no hindsight of the hope that social entrepreneurship can bring to Indonesia.
All that, my dear YCABers, is because of you. You have been the part of creating that change, bringing impact and transformation in the life of millions. That’s your core study. That’s the essay of your life – a kind of essay that will be written in the Book of Life. As for your final exams, I need you not only to present your best work but to keep your childlikeness. Only with that can you recapture a sense of wonder of why you are here in the first place, why you chose university of YCAB.
Some of you are here to ascribe meaning and purpose of your existence; some probably are just testing the water of what is like to be part of YCAB. Whatever your motivation, I want you to have fun. Have fun actualizing yourself here. Have fun throwing parties of doing good. Just have fun until you earn your degree. If I could urge you, do aim for double degrees; degrees in doing good and doing it well.
Thank you for all you do. Thank you for what you will do entering the years of your adulthood ahead. Thank you for all the sacrifices made – do know that only God and God alone will see what’s hidden in your heart and repay you abundantly.
Most of all, thank you for standing with me all these years, freshmen and seniors alike. Thank you for your faith in me. Thank you for what you’re wiling to do for the betterment of Indonesia. For the sake of those kids. For the sake of those mothers. As what you do to the least of God’s creation, the neediest of all, you are doing it for God.
Prayers and Love,
Veronica Colondam