Sustainability is a trending buzzword in Indonesia, applied largely to energy, food and natural resources, but it is also a key factor economically and especially politically. It’s all about developing the next generation of political and business leaders with the right skills and mindset to build on the nation’s rapid economic growth and influence in the region and develop Indonesia as a major player on the global stage.

This is the vision of Think Indonesia, a US based think-thank for young Indonesians studying and working abroad. It aims to spread international experience and viewpoints among young Indonesians here with the help of returning Indonesians.

Think Nusantara began as a weekly online publication, mostly written by undergraduate and graduate Indonesian scholars.  Its aim, according to its website, is to “engage Indonesians abroad with current affairs at home, welcoming the varied perspectives they bring with them. It also provides an opportunity to grapple with policy paradigms in meaningful ways, while familiarizing youth with real-world issues of importance and cultivating an ability to provide balanced analyses.”

It also hosts events and forums in Jakarta, Boston, New York, London, Los Angeles and Washington, DC on development issues in Indonesia, featuring high-level policy experts, professionals, and distinguished scholars as panelists.

Anthony Wonsono and Gitta Amelia, founders of the organization, spoke to AmCham Indonesia about Think Nusantara’s mission and vision.

AmCham Indonesia: What is Think Nusantara?

Anthony Wonsono: Think Nusantara is mostly a community of overseas Indonesian youth, specifically studying or working abroad, who want to come back to Indonesia and find ways where they can affect positive change. With roles in either the government or the private sector they can start investing in projects that benefit and add value to this country.

We are focusing on Indonesians abroad because we have a sister organization here that tries to spread the message in Indonesian universities. Because we started abroad, we wanted to find fellow Indonesians who are interested in Indonesia’s development and gather them together, now in London, New York, Washington DC and Boston.

Gitta Amelia: We want to create a space for our target audience to be able to think critically about Indonesian issues and also think about solutions for Indonesian development.

What are the core activities of Think Nusantara?

Anthony: Our main platform is our online publication, which we launched in February, and right now we are revamping the website and changing our editorial team; in September we will be much more streamlined and professional.

Our second platform, which will start in August, is our Think Nusantara chapters. This is similar to the Permias [The Association of Indonesian Students] model in the United States, where it has various chapters in different cities, and we will gather for discussion forums, focus groups and seminars, all geared toward development issues. For example, for our first event we will have a forum and focus group discussion it will all be talking about foreign ownership in Indonesia, whether not it restricts or promotes growth.

What contributions can be made by Think Nusantara?

Anthony: We think Indonesia has a deficit in leaders with a globalized worldview who believe in an integrated world economic order. We see a lot of protectionist and populist policies coming out in the last five years both under SBY [former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono] and now in the first eight months of Jokowi’s [Joko Widodo] presidency.

That, we think, is a major concern. We are entering a world where everybody is looking for more integration, but Indonesia is looking for more isolation. We want to be able, five to 15 years from now, to be in positions where we can push forward Indonesia’s global integration.

One of the ways that we are doing this is through events where we connect brilliant young minds who are hungry to go back to Indonesia with the right figures in public policy and the private sector so that they can interact, gain exposure, start applying for jobs, network, make a community and enter positions of influence and leadership. Think Nusantara is a kind of critical thinking platform.

Gitta: When we started this organization, we wanted to do both things. First was to gather a community Indonesian students studying abroad who truly care about Indonesia. These people can contribute to Think Nusantara by writing for us and in the publication they can aim toward our second vision – which is to inspire those with capabilities and potential to relate to issues back in Indonesia.

In the future, do you expect those young Indonesians to come back home and contribute here?

Anthony: Yes. We held an event on June 5 with people who had been special staff of either Jakarta Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama or various lawmakers in Indonesia. I am quite certain that in five to 10 years from now, our age group will be we are also very interested in entering those kind of positions and affecting change in that way.

We imagine a time when one of us or a couple of us may want to run for office or get involved in issues; they will need funding, staff and a community of people to support their vision, and they can come to Think Nusantara and to pick people they need from our community. You do not have to sell them the vision anymore, because everybody’s vision is already the same.

How do you attract young Indonesians to be aware of development issues and to come back home?

Anthony: I think the first way we did it was to know we cannot hit all targets, so first we were trying to find those who were already interested. And surprisingly, we found a lot more than we expected. Of the thousands of Indonesians studying in the US, along the East Coast, we had at least 40-50 students and we hadn’t even started and they had already shown interest and said they would join us and support us however they could. That happened after maybe one to two months of just talking to people randomly; it was not through sustained publicity or marketing.

From there, once we created these events and platforms, we brought in high profile speakers, and hopefully we will be able to market it and publicize it in a way where everybody will be interested in joining, or at the very least sharing what they have to say. And somewhere along the line, maybe they will be inspired to think about these issues too.

At the moment we are a self-selected group. We want people to join us who already have the passion for these issues, because if you do not have the passion we also do not yet have the mechanism to really teach you. The public face of it will probably come in the next year, where we start hosting larger public forums in the United States, starting in Washington DC, probably in February.

There is a trend for creating youth empowerment clubs in Indonesia. What is your view of those organizations?

Anthony: When we first started this, we definitely looked up a couple of different platforms and forums. We found that there are some really great initiatives brought out by students from UI [University of Indonesia] for example, and the Indonesian Youth Conference. The problem is not that their vision is lacking, but it is sustainability. It is always a one-hit wonder. They hold a big event once and they think it is great, and it is great. But the next year everybody has graduated and there is no regeneration. Which is why for Think Nusantara, we have a vision to not only be a non-profit organization, right now we are also working on regeneration

Gitta: Sustainability drove us to create the publication in the first place. Events might come and go, but the publication will always keep the discussion there forever online.

What is your vision for Think Nusantara in the long term?

Anthony: We would like to host at least one event in Indonesia every year, similar to the one in June. We will host a bigger one next year and then a bigger one the next year and so on. We want more varied events, we want it sometimes to be a networking event, or sometimes a public forum or a seminar in a university, sometimes it is a Q&A session or a panel session.

Gitta is a Wharton student, so she is business minded, and it is kind of a race in that environment, so we realized one thing was we had to find a way to monetize it. We need to make this sustainable without having to always ask for donations or sponsorship.

So our bigger vision in two to three years’ time is to actually take Think Nusantara’s online publication and convert it into an actual media company. Something like Mashable or Vice.com in the United States. Something where we can turn it into a news platform online – a 100 percent youth-oriented news platform is connected to the web. That is something we have not seen in Indonesia. We have The Jakarta Post, Jakarta Globe, Kompas and Detik, but they are not really geared towards the younger crowds that we want to tap into.