Irfan Amalee
If there were a thousand more like Irfan Amalee (32), peace will reign eternal.

For this national winner of the International Young Creative Entrepreneur (IYCE) Communication Award 2009, peace is the only means to build a better civilization.

Irfan is a multitalented young man: editor at Mizan publishing house, writer, journalist, filmmaker, peace trainer, and someone who’s concerned with children and teen education.
This West Java-born entrepreneur believes that peace building activities can be much more than simple charity work –especially when managed professionally as a social enterprise.

With tiny funds, he developed The Peace Generation Project in 2007. He led a small team at Mizan Pelangi that produced peace training modules. This includes training for national and international trainers, teachers, and community facilitators.

500 trained people were sent out to distribute the books door-to-door, promoting these to schools and non-government organisations in conflict areas in Aceh, Kalimantan, and Sulawesi.

Within a short time, Irfan succeeded in building a network of 15.000 students and 100 peace agents across the country. They in turn established their own community enterprises, setting up book shops, training centres, and reading clubs, which generate thousands of dollars in monthly sales.

His dream now is to create 100.000 more young Indonesians working as a community of peace makers.  

In the future, he plans to set up PeaceShops, PeaceCorners and PeaceStores, which will be managed by local communities. Peace –when managed professionally-- is certainly a good way to build better civilization.

Karina Primadhita
Pin Sudiraharti (47) and Karina Primadhita (22) are social entrepreneurs from Bandung. This mother and daughter on their own initiative set up a special needs school for children with hearing and speech impairments.

Setting aside some of her beauty salon business profits, Mrs. Sudiraharti took on her first student in 1997 in her living room – and a further 23 students when she began building a proper classroom near her house in 2000. Now, SLB Prima Bhakti Mulia teaches 75 students with hearing and speech impairments, from kindergarten to junior high school. This school has created jobs for 14 local people as teachers. With a focus on good quality and affordable education, SLB Prima Bhakti Mulia offers scholarship schemes for students from underprivileged families.

Karina is a Global Xchange volunteer, a British Council programme for Indonesian and UK volunteers age 18 – 25. Mrs. Sudiraharti is a community entrepreneur and British Council’s partners in Global XChange 2008.

Mahrizal Paru
Mahrizal (26) remembers his parents giving hom cacao seeds as a child. He would sell these for a few cents –enough to buy himself food at school. Today, he is Director of Tunas Bangsa Foundation, a non-profit organisation partnering with with some 70 cacao farmers in Pidi.

The region was one of the worst places to be during the decade-long armed conflict in Aceh. With no livelihood, villagers raided the 280 acres of forest bordering their hamlet. Mahrizal also observed the declining rainfall in his village

Rather than converting pristine forests, the foundation utilises idle, cleared land—often the grim reminder of illegal logging— to plan cacao and its covering trees. Besides providing local farmers with free cocoa seeds and fertiliser, Mahrizal also shares his skills to help improve the quality of the cacao yield. Now, each of the 50 hectares of trees can produce 1.2 tons of cacaos, which corresponds to annual revenue of US$ 240,000. Farmers sell the cacao beans to local buyers, who exports to other countries such as Malaysia and Singapore.

Mahrizal dream is to go beyond selling beans to producing real chocolate –organic, environmentally-sustainable, and hand grown by people who are starting to rebuild their lives from the bloody aftermath of conflict. “We need more than just funding and grants. We need to run this like a real business with bank credits.”