Sticking to Your Movement Why Consistency Matters

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when i was 11 years old

i co-founded a non-governmental

organization with my mother

called fey in english

that translates to phase home or phase

house

and our mission was simple

we wanted to eradicate child trafficking

in indonesia through peer-to-peer

education

the idea was that with increasing youth

participation there would be a decrease

in youth exploitation and trafficking

throughout the country or at least

in their communities

at 11 years old i had one strong

belief that change

long lasting change would only be

possible

through grassroots impact emerging

from youth empowerment it was a big

belief i know but

six year long story short rumafei grew

to become an organization i am

extraordinarily proud of

to become an organization that has a

safe house a shelter

for victims of sexual abuse and

exploitation

in indonesia

when i was asked to speak at tedx i

wasn’t so sure where i wanted to start

with the story

see when people hear this whole

background about starting rumafei the

first question they ask

is why why did you start rumafei

so young and while that’s definitely a

valid question that i can and will

answer

later on usually when people ask

why the answer they’re looking for lies

in the how question

not how i started i doubt there are many

people who are quite interested

in the legalities of starting an ngo

but how i stayed so consistent

and committed see this took me quite a

long time to realize

because i’m the type of person who

thinks initiative is everything

as long as you’re proactive as long as

you start something

life will take it out of your hands and

it will just

grow but like a seed

our ideas and our initiatives need

water need to grow

so i did a little bit of an evaluation

of the past six years

i will be upfront and say that i am 17

years old

i don’t know much and i’m still learning

so

many things

but why did i stay so consistent boiled

down to

one big point and it was that i found

myself working

for something bigger than me

and i know that sounds like such an icky

kind of concept that

when you say bigger than yourself it

sounds like you’re supposed to go to

another

destitute third world country other than

you know our own

and serve the people there and somehow

find ourselves while we do that and

while

there is some sort of truth in that

sentiment usually we have to look

closer to home see i’ve always been a

big believer

in the idea that purpose isn’t about

what you can get but about what you can

give to other people

and so when i realized that it was that

i found myself

working for something bigger than me i

did little three little bullet points

after

what was it about that concept that made

me committed

number one i knew

how to mobilize the resources i had

number two

i knew my impact and number three

i knew or at least i’m learning to take

a break

but the one i want to emphasize most is

know

your impact because consistency won’t

happen if you don’t know

how important the work that you do is i

want to take you back

before 2013 before the start of mafe

before i ever had this t-shirt

printed i grew up in a family that

emphasized social responsibility that i

had

a responsibility not as a citizen not as

a girl but as

a human being to do something bigger

to do something for others i never took

my own initiative i never was committed

or particularly

unique in that sense but when i learned

about child trafficking

i was terrified because i had grown up

learning about all these different types

of social justice

issue and here was this one that i had

never heard of and do you know why

because we are scared to talk about

issues like child prostitution child

sexual

abuse and reproductive health because it

is uncomfortable for us

even though 40 to 70 000 children are

trafficked every

single year in indonesia 43.5 percent

of victims of sexual exploitation from

all ages are below

14 years old and we don’t talk about

that we don’t like to hear that because

it makes us uncomfortable

i sent a couple handwritten letters to

activists ngos government officials even

some actors and actresses asking them

if i could become some sort of mini

volunteer in their organizations

i didn’t get many replies but the ones

that did

opened some amazing doors for me to be a

little volunteer to understand more

about this issue

and i saw one problem

and it was that they were adults and

there was this generational gap that

they weren’t even

trying to bridge you see

i’m generation zed a lot of the people

who worked in these organizations

were either baby boomers or gen x and

while that might not

mean a lot of things to some of you guys

it meant a lot to these kids because it

meant that they

couldn’t connect they didn’t feel good

confiding in these people

and so what happened was a little

discussion group

a small one me my friends

other friends from other communities and

we brought in a legal advocate or an

activist and they talked about things

that the kids might not feel comfortable

talking about

i nudged them if the lady said something

funny

but there was real change in the focus

groups that we had

the kids were more comfortable to ask

questions

six seven months after we started

i was nine or ten i want to say

one of the girls comes and

you know asks if we can talk i don’t

think anything of it because i think you

know it’s just

a normal conversation and she tells me

she looks at me in the eye and i’ll

never forget that she says

my grandfather has been touching me

i know with the way the story is going

you all know where

what happened but i didn’t i’m not a

counselor not a therapist not a

psychiatrist i don’t know anything

about this except from what i’ve heard

from my mentors i’m only

a facilitator i’m not a teacher and i

don’t

know what to do

she is nine years old and her

grandfather has been touching her for as

long

as she can remember

molesting her

i don’t want to get into the case too

much

but she asked me to come with her to

talk to the legal advocate we worked

with we

you know there was a case and we found

her counselor and

it was okay her parents luckily

were terrified not all cases are like

these

i remember going home that night and

crying to my mom and asking why did she

tell me a selfish part of me

wanted her to take it back so i didn’t

have to remember that happening because

i was nine years old i didn’t need to

remember or to know that kind of thing

happen but here

is the truth every single one of us

needs to know that this kind of thing

happens

and it was then when i realized the

importance of that kind of discussion

group that kind of support network that

many people

might not have the strength

of peers of friends of a support

community and so

rumafei was born

and as we’ve worked it sounds like

everything is just

fine you know after that i found myself

working in this sector where a lot of

people try to find their self-worth you

know because

we’re helping people and you think that

if we help others

then maybe we’ll feel better about

ourselves that’s a lot of the sentiment

that comes but the truth is when you

start working in a place like that

you face this thing and it’s called

compassion fatigue i don’t know if

you’ve ever

heard of it but it’s when caregivers you

know we’re walking

in a line and each step we’re dangling

and on one side is

empathy but on this side

is apathy because we’re so so tired

of hearing the same stories without any

change in statistics without any change

in the cases in fact

sometimes they get even worse and we

feel powerless to do anything so we shut

ourselves

down from feeling bad for people

i know it sounds like something that’s

obvious but we face some of the worst

issues that you could ever imagine

children who are malnourished

who have stds

who have been held in cages pregnant at

ages

13 and 14.

you have to know your impact

after six years of working at rumafei i

can’t tell you how many times that i’ve

wanted to quit that i said

look i cannot deal with this any

more i’m so tired of not being able to

save more people for every one girl we

save thousands

more are being trafficked

but you stop and you think

because you see when i tell that story

you might think that

this one case was the one that keeps

driving ruma’s face six years later no

it is her now she is not a victim but a

survivor it’s the power of survivors

that keep us going that drive

us to make a bigger impact to make a

more important

impact

i know i’m standing here right now and i

might seem a little bit crazy and i

might seem

you know she’s just 17 what does she

know and i’ll accept that i

don’t you know i haven’t learned many

things in life

people see me and the thing that they

see is maybe activists

in terms of relationships they see

daughter they see sister

they see friend best friend

cousin granddaughter there are all these

labels that make up my identity

one of them is grandmother

and i like to add that myself sounds

kind of crazy i know

i will assure you i don’t have any

biological children or grandchildren

yet but i have three

grandbabies

one is one one is six months and the

other is five months

when people ask me why i start now the

answer is

actually very simple it’s because i am

not waiting

are human traffickers waiting for me

to graduate high school to graduate

university

no so i’m not waiting either

i’m not a voice for the voiceless i’m

merely someone who tries to amplify the

voice i try to give

a platform because these girls they have

voices and they’re shouting

so loud you just don’t want to hear them

because they make you

uncomfortable and so when people ask why

i tell them

pretty easy because i don’t want my

three grandkids to grow up in a world

where they have to worry

about what happened to their mothers

happening to

them

because it happens all the

time

i don’t know much but i know i’m a

grandmother

and i know and it’s taken me a while to

know this

that my impact is

real and so can yours

look we’re growing up or at least living

in a world where we have become digital

natives we grow up and

we already know how to use phones ipads

laptops and there are websites like

itabisa.com and

oregonchange.org that aim to facilitate

our need to change the world

there are more and more youth driven

organizations and movements that are

mobilizing

each other and our power so that we can

make

something better you don’t have to just

have the same passion

but what you need to have is commitment

it’s consistency

and at the risk of being incredibly

cliched it’s

love and so i hope

you know that if you get anything from

this speech

it’s to know that not only do you have

an impact

but you can make an even bigger one

thank you

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you