Youth Rights Festival

Changemaker: Ryan Febrianto

Talking about the issue of human rights and diversity in Indonesia publicly is still

difficult due to the sensitivity of the subject matter, especially amongst young people.

Despite this, the fact still stands that human rights and diversity is part of every day

life for young people. Our research shows that young people still have little to no

understanding on the basic concepts of human rights. To alleviate this situation, a

group of young people joined in the Youth for Humanity Indonesia community would

like to organize a festival that will give a chance for young people, especially in

Jakarta and its surrounding areas as the political center of Indonesia and as a

metropolitan, diverse city, to find out about human rights and youth diversity in a

more ‘pop’ manner through Youth Rights Festival, held in November (roadshow) and

culminating in 8th of December 2012 in Jakarta, in conjunction with the International

Human Rights Day. The attendees to this festival are young people, aged 15-30 years,

from various backgrounds. This festival will commence in the form of a roadshow to

several schools, speaking on anti-bullying and understanding diversity, holding a

seminar as a discussion space, and with sports and arts exhibition which will promote

young people’s unique way of campaigning on human rights and youth diversity. We

hope that this method will also lead to young people’s voices being heard and for

young people to be involved in the nation’s development. The festival will also

provide a Changemakers Training as a way for the attendees to realize their social

ideas into concrete social projects that they will implement in their respective

communities through training named “Human Rights Defender Camp”. Today, there

are 30 young people from various economic backgrounds, ethnic background, sexual

orientation, beliefs, and ideologies joined together in the Youth for Humanity

Indonesia community. We aim to show that diversity and difference is something to

be appreciated, in order to create inclusive social change in our society. For

information on our community and what we have achieved/done, we invite you to

visit our website at: http://youthrightsfest.tumblr.com

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