 |
| Alya Sabira, Gender Youth Activist for UN Women Indonesia |
Feminist Society Indonesia — Witnessing the heartbreaking reality where many girls in her
society became victims of sexual violence, forced early marriages, and could
not go to school due to the culture that prevents them to get higher education
has motivated Alya Sabira — a UN Women national gender youth activist, to
become concerned about advocating for gender equality and women’s rights.
Apart from becoming a gender youth
activist for UN Women Indonesia, she is also the founder of a youth movement
called Speak Out Youth (SOY).
Her activism on gender equality
issues began when she was 14 years old. At that time, she was joining a program
under Plan International Indonesia called Forum Anak Desa. Through this
program, she had many opportunities to learn and improve her activism. She attended
seminars with people in the community (Sukabumi), talked to stakeholders,
attended Rencana Pembangunan Jangka Menengah Daerah (RPJMD) meetings, and
worked with many government agencies.
As a young woman who participated
in that program, she faced so many challenges while advocating those issues,
one of which was gender inequality, where she used to be underestimated because
she is a woman. So, when she had the chance to do advocacy, she would do her
best and give her participation meaningfully instead of being present as a
decoration. At the end of the program, she was able to advocate for the
Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to prevent child marriage to the city Mayor
of Sukabumi.
When the program of Forum Anak Desa
ended, she thought that her advocacy should not stop; she still needed to do
something. As a result, in 2021, she asked some of her classmates to establish
Speak Out Youth (SOY) by starting a campaign on Instagram regarding “Stop
Sexual Violence”. As the days went by, it became a bigger platform for people.
It was started in Sukabumi, and now they have SOY Bandung and SOY Jakarta. They
currently have around 500 volunteers and have contributed many impactful programs
to their surroundings.
At SOY, they have 3 missions that
they call 3 As (Awareness, Action, Advocacy). In terms of awareness, they want
to set SOY as a medium where everyone can raise their awareness about any kind
of issues in their surroundings and try to overcome them. In terms of Action,
it is a manifestation of the awareness they have by starting to do small things
such as making campaigns and seeking funding. Through this, they are able to
gain a lot of funding from different organizations, foreign aid, and from
government agencies. They currently have their regular donors from outside of
the country, such as Europe, America, Australia, etc. After having awareness
and action, they have to do something bigger as the commitment of advocacy,
such as challenging the status quo and dealing with the stakeholders in the
decision-making process.
With the intention to make her
advocacy bigger, she decided to apply for the UN Women national gender youth
activist in 2024. She ultimately got selected as one of the sixth national
youth activists, where each of the activists was placed in a different kind of
sector. She was placed under the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) sector, where
she is responsible for advocating for young women on various issues such as
climate change, humanitarian issues, and everything that comes to women’s security.
You can also read: Ikrar’s Inspirational Story: Making Impacts through Education
Working with the UN Women
Indonesia, she feels that her voice is heard as well as feels fully involved.
In 2024, she helped the UN Women Indonesia to co-organize the discussion for
the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BPfA+30), which was going to
be a recommendation for the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). She was
fully involved from the beginning to the end of the program; she made the
presentation, she invited the young people, and she even participated in the
selection process.
She felt that this opportunity was
something bigger for her advocacy on gender equality and women’s rights issues,
as the recommendation about BPfA+30 would be brought to the regional review,
and from that, it would be brought to CSW.
Alya is a true portrayal of a young
woman who cares about her neighborhood and tries to take action to empower
society, especially women. She recognizes that young people really come into
play in being part of the advocacy and activism, even if it is just a small
thing, such as telling friends about the importance of gender equality or
simply raising awareness about what is happening in the community.
She believes that advocacy and
activism are not always about going to the streets and protesting. Sometimes,
we can do advocacy by starting with the things that we are passionate about.
For instance, if we want to advocate for the environmental issues and we love
music, we can write songs about helping the planet; if we are advocating for
gender equality and we have an interest in movie, we can make a short movie
about gender equality; or if we love social media, love making content, we can
also do advocacy by making content and share in our social media.
However, she also realizes that
advocacy is a long journey; hence, it could be better for us to find our ally
when doing advocacy. By having partners, it can be much easier for us to make
movements in our surroundings since we have them to collaborate together.
Alya will always stand up for
gender equality and fight for women’s rights since women are not safe. Their
rights are highly vulnerable to being neglected. She hopes there will be more
people who are aware of gender equality and women’s rights, as it is one of the
critical targets in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that Indonesia
should achieve in 2030.
Feminist Society Indonesia and
Speak Out Youth also have the same deal regarding advocacy on gender equality
and women’s rights issues. In the future, we would like to collaborate if there
is a program that allows for collaboration. We believe that collaboration and
synergy are the keys to achieve our goals in advocating for gender equality and
women’s rights.
You can contact us on:
Instagram : @feministsociety.id
LinkedIn : Feminist Society Indonesia
Email : fem.official7@gmail.com
No comments:
Post a Comment