Jakarta, February 26th, 2016 – Over the past decades, the citizen sector has discovered that in order to be sustainable, they cannot rely on sponsors and grants to support their programs to make a sustainable impact. Realizing that fact, YCAB Foundation is the first Indonesian NGO turned social enterprise, focusing on youth development & economic empowerment. In order to create a bigger impact, YCAB believes that there is nothing as powerful as a new idea in the hands of a passionate local organization that deals directly with the beneficiaries. But, as with many other local organizations, they found a lot of problems, such as funding, program design, and impact measurement. Since then, YCAB has started devoting its time to start enabling other like minded organizations and moved from implementer to become an enabler.
YCAB 1st Partner Gathering
Considering the idea of successfully making a larger impact program across the country, YCAB initiated YCAB 1st Partners’ Gathering. As its first initiative, YCAB gathered all of its program partners from across Indonesia and ASEAN for 3 days of events, workshops and networking, where every organization involved could share their experiences, thoughts, and ideas on how to maximize impact in the youth development area. All of these organizations have done tremendous programs with YCAB, and some of them have also done other good activities apart from with YCAB. But, most of them struggle with issues in terms of sustainability for funding their activities. Therefore this event was also designed as a melting pot between YCAB and its partners to accelerate their growth by analyzing their current situation, and their desired situation, and find solution to it.
As a start of the gatherings activities, all of YCAB’s partners did a site trip to Rumah Belajar Duri Kepa and to Microfinance clients. Day 1 was closed with dinner. All program partners met up with the YCAB Board of Advisors, Corporate Partners, Pro Bono Consultant Partners and also media. That was networking time for everyone involved at the dinner.
On Day 2, responding to the demand for greater access to knowledge and access for funding, the 1st YCAB Partners’ Gathering invited several top notch speakers from private and government sectors. These workshops dug deep into the best practice on how organizations can strive to deliver a social impact. Each presenter shared their knowledge and breadth of experience, leaving participants with lesson learned to apply to their own projects and change making trajectories.
During the first session, Mrs. Veronica Colondam, CEO and Founder YCAB Foundation, began by sharing about YCAB’s transformation from a non-profit organization to becoming a social enterprise. She also described the overview of the YCAB Roadmap 2016 – 2020, and its plan and strategy moving forward; including 2016’s Theme of Collaboration and Alignment (importance of partnership). In the second session, Mrs. Chrisma Albandjar, Special Staff to The Chief of Staff, Executive Office of the President of the Republic of Indonesia and Mr. M. Arsjad Rasjid, Vice President Director Indika Energy mainly talked about how to navigate partnership with corporates and government. They described how to react to a (market) change and how to manage that change into a sustainable change internally. All the participants were encouraged to think ahead, and that they also had to consider the perspectives from corporate and government sides when they create program (s).
Third session covered by Mrs. Wiyanna Zarwin, Head of Corporate Communication Tower Bersama Group on how to sustain a long-term partnership with corporates. The issue’s on a corporation’s CSR is not only just a program but also about a development issue, and corporates have specific criteria in choosing partners to implement that development program. Reliability, transparency and image were only some criteria mentioned by Mrs Zarwin. These three criteria could be reviewed through technology. Mrs. Esther Sianipar, Community Affairs Manager Microsoft Indonesia along with Mrs. Rini Hasbi, Marketing Director Intel Indonesia shared on the last session of Day 1 on how non-profit organizations (or social enterprises) can use technology to operate their activities efficiently. Besides, technology can also help them to brand and communicate their activities both internally and externally.
On the last day, Mr. Mario Montino, Chief Strategy Officer YCAB facilitated all participants on how to translate their organization vision into a specific mission and how to slip in information gained from Day 2 sessions into proper strategy.