Wahyu Aditya
Adit has since used his £7,500 grand prize to finance his Hello;Motion management team to study the film industry in London and Bristol. He is now planning a collaborative animation festival with the Watershed, Bristol’s premier film and animation centre.

Wahyu Aditya was only 27 when crowned as the International Young Creative Entrepreneur (IYCE) Screen Award 2007 winner in London –the youngest champion in the history of this British Council competition.

A self-confessed dreamer, Adit sold his first drawings to school friends in Malang, East Java. That entrepreneurial spirit took him to study Interactive Multimedia at the KvB Institute of Technology, Sydney, Australia. There, he snatched the “Best Student” award.

Adit moved to Jakarta to work as creative designer at Trans TV while freelancing as animator and music clip director. He won the Jakarta International Film Festival (Jiffest) Movie competition 2004, the Jiffest & Hubert Bals Foundation Script Development project 2005, and scholarship for animation and cinema production from Japan in 2006.

In a surprise move, Adit left his full-time job at the wee age of 24. He started his own business, Hello;Motion with a US$ 400,000 bank loan –all of which was repaid by the time he turned 27.

He established the Hello;Fest short film and animation festival, attracting over 400 new works and 10,000 audiences annually and creating new jobs and business potentials for Indonesia’ ever-growing film and content industries.

Mita Sirait
After an entrepreneurial career in Yogyakarta, and following a first job experience in the ‘non-profit world’ in Bandung, Mita took a leap and joined Water Sanitation Action (then Immanuel Foundation) in Jakarta, in 2006. Here, in one of the worst slums in the Indonesian capital, she found not only thousands of people with a pressing need for better living conditions, but also a conduit for her passion to work with communities.

Mita began helping communities to look at waste in a completely different way. “These communities are used to seeing garbage every day. Kids are born in it, they grow up surrounded by it—and they don’t see anything wrong with that,” Mita explains. She is changing this situation around by helping communities better understand the health impacts of garbage, and teaching them to look at waste through an economic prism.

At first, the transition was hard. The community have little awareness of water and food hygiene, and often few concerns about the environment. At times, its leaders failed to see how they would benefit from receiving help on environmental and health matters provided by Mita.

By showing communities how waste can be collected, cleaned and recycled into new saleable goods such as handbags, Mita has helped create new sources of income. Today, project participants dream up original products made from recyclable materials. Ibu Sum, a beneficiary of the project, says “I am really in favour of this initiative because now I can buy school clothes for my children and save some money for their education later on.”

Families that were collecting 250,000 rupiah per month from waste collection are now earning the double thanks to the project, while they also compost their waste and conserve water.

But don’t call her ‘Santa Claus’. Mita’s work is all about empowering people—not just handing them ‘gifts’ of cash— so that they learn new skills to turn garbage into a source of income

Silverius Oscar
In 2003, Silverius Oscar “Onte” Unggul (37) established the Forest Network. He was both concerned with the high level of illegal logging as well as with the poverty among 30 million Indonesians living near rainforests.

Forest Network provides experts to help timber companies design production plans, connects traditional production with the international market, and facilitates certifications of the ‘SmartWood’ label.

Onte’s other solution is to set-up co-operatives in 12 villages in South Sulawesi to manage and market community-organized timber production around 300 acres of rain forest. The villages coordinated forest patrols against illegal logging and 10 seeds are planted for every tree cut down.

A year after this pilot project, each member of the cooperative was earning US$160 for every cubic meter of timber sold in three months -four times their previous income. By the end of the year, the cooperative was also able to pay dividends to each of its member. The business also had a significant impact on local government revenue.

A former Boy Scout and athlete, Onte became involved in environmental causes while studying at the university. He began to work with indigenous population, setting up Yascita with friends right after graduation to promote natural resource- based businesses.

The local media ignored his report on illegal logging practices in South Sulawesi. Unfazed, he and his friends set up The Voice of Nature community radio station in 1999. It broadcasts local environmental issues and natural resources management. It remains one of the most popular stations in the province.

In 2003, he set up TV Kendari –Indonesia’s sole local community-owned and run station, funded by a small seed investment.

Onte is an Ashoka Fellow, co-winner of the Indonesian Ernst & Young’s Social Entrepreneur of the Year 2008, and a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader 2009 --one of only 5 Indonesian listed amongst 230 outstanding young leaders from 71 countries