Reggy Hasibuan
Founder: Anomali Youth Empowerment Centre, Malang

He believes in empowering the young by giving them a voice and communication skills. In his hometown, he has spearheaded an initiative to raise environmental awareness through youth collective action. Meet Reggy Hasibuan—debater, climate change activist, and change-maker. His tool: Anomali, a youth empowerment centre he set up to better catalyze change.

Rewind Reggy’s life a few years back and you will find few signs of what was to come. He read International Relations at Parahyangan University in Bandung, with the prospects of a distinguished career in diplomacy, perhaps at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or with the United Nations. But it was debates that won him over. “I was passionate about debating, which I found to be both liberating and empowering at the same time”, recalls Reggy.

Debating, much more than just talking

The experience turned out to be contagious. Soon, Reggy and his friends were scouting high schools in Bandung to encourage students in setting up debating teams. “We were looking for young pioneers who would accept the challenge to run debating clubs with our help” Reggy explains.”Our role was to spark their interest and to coach them”.

These efforts culminated in an international debating tournament in Bali, where some of the students that Reggy had taken under his wing were awarded scholarships to study abroad—for some, on the spot. “Young people that are used to debating find it easier to face challenges such as proposal and essay writing, interviews and presentations,” according to Reggy, a testament to the transforming power of this activity.

Birth of Anomali

But Reggy was already looking beyond catalyzing debating clubs, and was keen to progress from words to action. To see his ideas through he required a larger vehicle—and so Anomali was born. “At Anomali, we want to show young people that it is possible for them to actively shape the future, starting from our cities, or even at a smaller scale,” explains Reggy.

One of the problems that he decided to focus upon early on was environmental degradation in his home town. “Residents do not take an active role to influence development for their own good,” laments Reggy. One of Anomali’s flagship efforts, the Urban Environmental Programme, is Reggy’s response to solve environmental issues in small, fun and practical ways—from bird-watching to garbage clean-up.