Words by Adrian Reynaldo Sudirman (@adrianreyss)

“I cannot change the world alone, but I can cast a across the waters to create many ripples” – Mother Teresa

Life is an excellent game. Change is inevitable, but progression is always a choice. Today, we may stand on certain points but we never know what will happen tomorrow. We can be in the same place or we can choose to try something new and stay away from our comfort zone.

It has been a wonderful opportunity to be able to visit and get in touch with culture and community in one of the most rural place in Indonesia. What an unexpected experience, yet become the best decision in my life! In this point. Trying to create new box of experiences from living in the metropolitan city of Jakarta to a rural area in Nusa Tenggara Timur, especially in Timor Tengah Selatan district, at Anin Village, where can be reach about six hours driving from Kupang.

Health and Education engagement become the main reason of my visit. Both of those sectors are the fundamental aspects of human life and further development needed to be performed and established there, as soon as possible. But, what can we do to then?

This journey has become my opportunity to apply one of the important competencies in XL Future Leader program, “Managing Change”. Based on what I learn in the class, managing change is not always about doing big things but it rather about doing small things that have big impacts for the community. It’s not only based on our idea and creativity, but rather based on the things they need in certain condition. This insight has inspired me to develop healthy lifestyle and creative education as my core program in that area. The core program will be supported with community diagnosis and health cadre training, especially related with most common disease that will be obtained from the community assessment process.

As mentioned above, the combination between creative education related with healthy lifestyle has become our main concern in this project. We obtained three challenges based on the process before, which are health hygiene, nutrition-related disease, and community disease. The collaboration with local health cadre becomes important role in order to maintain sustainability of our project in this area. We believe when we give a man a fish, we only feed him for a day. When we teach them to fish, we will feed him for a lifetime.

In the health hygiene issue, we educate them about hand-washing life style. This topic has become the easiest way to start and maintain healthy lifestyle. Primary school children become the main target of this issue. We teach them the proper way of hand-washing by providing new tools (Tippy-tap) that will encourage them to wash their hand frequently. In nutrition-related disease, mothers become the main target of this issue. Interactive workshop and discussion between health cadre and mother in one place can lead into mutual understanding in the next day. In the workshop we also educate them how to get well-nourished during pregnancy period because the number of pregnancy-anemia due to lack of nutrition is quite high on that place. In the community disease section, we make intervention to the five common disease there, which are scabies (skin disease), HIV, anemia, malaria, and diarrhea. Each disease has its own intervention and education program. For example, in scabies sector, we perform the mass treatment to all the families in that area. We educate them about the disease and health hygiene lifestyle to prevent the spread of disease between friend and family. It is interesting because the disease was spread by the habit of children there to watch movie “Anak Jalanan” together in the same place, so when one child has the disease, he will infect others. In the HIV section, we perform the radio talkshow and interview in Soe, the capital city of Timor Tengah Selatan. The old culture and community response related with this disease has lead to the under-diagnosed condition in the society, or in the other words the ODHA did not know that they have already infected with the HIV.

Once again, it has become the great opportunity to learn health, education, and culture together at the same time. The acceptance of locals there inspired me to go back or to visit others rural place in Indonesia. Their hope and enthusiasm to be a better people for this nation has become one of the best aspirations I’ve ever heard in my life. They realize that being living in rural area does not mean they cannot cope with the globalization in the world. The dream will always live in their heart as long as there are many people like all of you who want to learn, share, and impact together with them.

From this reminiscing journey, I learn that there are times when we give light to others. There are times when we receive light from others.  As long as there is light, there is always hope and always a way.