Youth in Action, Nation's Resilience Awaits

Do you realize that youth can bring renewal and be a helper to their environment? Yes, the role of youth is quite crucial to encourage the creation of national resilience. This can be started by increasing the knowledge capacity and skills of youth in managing crises and disasters so that they can have adequate preparedness when facing these conditions in the future.

Given the important role of young people, and considering the context of disaster risk in DKI Jakarta which is vulnerable to various disaster threats, the SinerGi project of Wahana Visi Indonesia, funded by USAID, has been providing mentoring and capacity building for youth since November 2020.

This assistance is carried out through various series of activities such as training and disaster risk reduction campaigns. Although conducted online, this mentoring has reached 51 people with greater participation of female participants. This is in line with the program's objective of targeting young women as parties who are vulnerable to various risks including disaster risk.

Amertia (19) is one of those involved in this activity. She participated in various training such as gender and disability mainstreaming training in disaster management, social media, communication, leadership, disaster risk reduction, and voice of citizen action.

"I have experienced many benefits from participating in DRR Youth mentoring, these benefits are both in terms of knowledge and skills," she said.

After providing the training, the participants then made a follow-up plan by conducting a disaster risk reduction (DRR) campaign through social media. The social media-based campaign was carried out in groups to hone skills from the training that had been trained to the participants.

 "I can learn about teamwork, the skills of how to work together, communicate to coordinate, lead, and then we can learn more about how to reduce disaster risk," she added.

Through this program, it is hoped that more young people in Jakarta will be more involved in participating as agents of social change, especially in disaster management.

Written by: Rany Mariana, SinerGi Project Project Officer, Wahana Visi Indonesia