The first of my five months with Happy Hearts Indonesia is already coming to an end and today as the grand finale I gave my first speech in front of the Raffles Christian School in Pondok Indah, Jakarta.
Yesterday our Development Director, Lusman came over to my desk and told me not to “[…] forget the meeting tomorrow at Raffles, ya! I meet you there at 7am.” and I thought that this would be just another normal meeting with him taking the lead so that I can watch and observe him talking about Happy Hearts’ vision and mission.
I knew that at some point throughout my internship I would be doing parts of these presentations myself and talk in front of some of the students we work with. But I didn’t assume that day would come so soon. During our lunch break yesterday we were joking about me doing the presentation at Raffles on my own, when he suddenly said “No but seriously Annie, tomorrow you do it okay!”
I have seen him giving this presentation in front of teachers and one of our partners for corporate sponsorship, but never in front of a full auditorium of students. And of course I was nervous at first but also happy to embrace the challenge. After all I am here to put myself out there and learn new things. But mostly I was thankful to be trusted enough to do this after such a short time working with Happy Hearts.
So I used the last hour in the office to prepare, as the school assembly was scheduled for 7:30am the next morning. So once again I had to get up a little bit earlier than I usually would to arrive at the school on time. But of course I underestimated the traffic in Jakarta and instead of the 25 minutes it would normally take me to get there, it took me almost one hour. Luckily I had planned to arrive there by 7am to have some time before the actual presentation and therefore arrived just in time.
The student council with whom Lusman had already met before I started my intership introduced us and Lusman proceeded to introduce me as the current intern of Happy Hearts Indonesia. Then it was my turn and I went up on stage. I was slightly nervous of course as I was facing around 200 students. In school and university I had given plenty of presentations, but never in front of so many people, especially people that did not know me and people I had never seen before.
Me presenting about Happy Hearts Indonesia
I explained what Happy Hearts Indonesia is and what we do. I also talked about the core problems we want to eradicate and how we want to do this. Further I gave them some insight in our founding story as well as our achievements so far. After I finished my part of the presentation I handed the mic back to Lusman and he elaborated on the school’s involvement.
Afterwards we had a quick chat with Mrs. Inggar, our contact person at the school, and two of the student council members. On April 7th they will hold a fundraiser to hopefully raise enough money to rebuild a school in NTT. Every time I get to meet some of these ambitious and inspiring students, I am amazed that they are taking on responsibility at such a young age and step up to help others. I am really excited to participate in the event they have planned and watch them putting their plans into action.
Mrs. Inggar, Lusman Yunarto, Me, Members of the Student Council
Written by: Anni
