The crisis caused by the coronavirus has changed in almost all elements of life. The economy is experiencing its biggest contraction in centuries. Health and politics seem irrevocably bound together, and society is in alien territory as we learn to work and live under lockdown. We do whatever we can in order to stop the coronavirus by radically changing almost everything we do; how we work is one of the examples. The revolution of working from home or what is now popular as Work From Home (WFH) has become an option implemented by companies. For some people who are familiar with this work method, it is no longer a big problem, but for some people this might be a way of “going out of the comfort zone” or more likely about testing for agility. The same thing happens in the Education field, teachers and students are challenged to adapt using the Learn From Home (LFH) system with online learning methods. It’s not easy to quickly change the conventional habits on a massive basis. On one occasion, the Minister of Education and Culture of the Republic of Indonesia, Nadiem Makarim also admit that “Learning is not always easy, it is time for us to innovate, experiment and listen more to our conscience,”

Nowadays, since all the things must be done at home due to the status quo, we are forced to empower technology to become the basis in human life. Sure, everyone is trying to adapt to this new normal and has to go through it. However, during this time it is crucial for us to find a new strategy to survive and thrive because however life must go on and the only person who can overcome the crisis is the one who sees the change as the only constant which refers to the character of agile. The agility during these quarantine days are crucial, the challenge to show the capability of increasing the speed of innovations are required during these times. Trust, everyone is trying to adapt this new normal and for sure we must not simply give up with it. To tackle the problem or opportunity and the delivery of an innovative solution, XL Future Leaders with its 3 core competencies: Effective Communication, Entrepreneurship & Innovation, and Managing Change also has their own ways to bring the commitment of giving back to the community towards community service projects.

Community service is an annual project which is led by the XL Future Leaders awardee themselves. In this second year of program, the awardee of XL Future Leaders Batch 7 especially Medan Class held an event called #SejamBarengXLFL as their breakthrough innovations in the middle of the quarantine days where the spirit coming from the tagline of #IlmuJanganStopDiSaya. #SejamBarengXLFL is an hour virtual-class experience with the XL Future Leaders awardees as the facilitator, and provides 25 classes in total, where a maximum of 2 classes were held per day until 20th of May 2020. Starting in the beginning of May , the excitement was real, because the classes for the first wave closed with a total of over 340 participants and reached out over 600 participants in total right on the day the event was officially closed. “I’m so glad to join #SejamBarengXLFL. The facilitators have given such an understandable concept of learning and practicing the Elevator Pitch by also giving some interesting tips.”, said Hesmitha Eunike, one of the participants of  #SejamBarengXLFL. The same story is coming from Maulana, one of the participants of #SejamBarengXLFL, he said, “This is truly a community service which has helped those who can’t simply reach out to any soft skills training before because of the matter of academic access and now can learn a real time sharing with the facilitator by only using gadgets. It’s cool! I personally never been into any class like this because I lived far away from the city.”

The current pandemic is surely the crisis most of us have seen, but it is hardly a crisis. It’s better to call it an unexpected challenge and opportunity where we can prove another sign of today’s agility by simply increasing the speed of innovations instead of giving up with the ugly thing called pandemic. So, now it’s time for you to rise up and make sure your agility is moving to the next level.

Written by : Mega Riana Hutagalung – XLFL Batch 7