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A place for Women
CeweQuat community provides a place and activities for women aged 18 to 25 who want to bring out and shape their characters
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eweQuat community provides a place and activities for women aged 18 to 25 who want to bring out and shape their characters.
Bunga Mega, the founder, said the community was not just a place for young women to gather and share ideas, but also to empower themselves.
'Developing women is very challenging, because unlike men who only strive for success, we also want to have someone who can listen to us, who can share about many things. We want a place where women can be themselves,' she said after the recent launch of her CeweQuat Book.
Founded in 2012, CeweQuat was originally just an online movement that aimed to encourage women. As the online media grew bigger, Mega decided to hold offline meetings every month. She called them DatangBulan events.
The event usually invites speakers, including prominent guest speakers, to discuss various kinds of themes, such as love, work and health.
But if the group's aim was to help improve women's characters, a regular monthly event was not enough, so Mega decided to set up the Sisterhood Camp, a six-month-long training program.
'Sisterhood is the gateway to become a member of CeweQuat, because here we have a lot of activities on how to become strong and smart women,' Mega said.
Sisterhood's first session started last year and 50 people applied to take part, but only 30 got in, she added.
During the whole program the participants will attend monthly classes on, among other things, leadership, work ethics and grooming. In addition, they also participate in a field trip and are required to contribute their writings to CeweQuat's webpage.
Participants will also be divided into groups that are tasked to organize social projects.
Some of the projects that were organized by the first batch included a story-telling event for children with cancer at Dharmais Hospital National Cancer Center and an entrepreneurship class at a vocational school.
In between their classes and projects, they also have a 'Street Seventeen' event where they organize '17' birthday parties for girls living in an orphanage who are turning 17.
'Many of the participants couldn't meet our minimum requirements. For example, if they were absent for more than two times from our meetings they had to leave the program,' Mega said.
At the end of the program only 10 participants got through to graduation day and the graduates can then proceed to become CeweQuat's members.
'The requirements may be quite difficult, but that way we hope to be able to instill integrity and discipline to improve their quality,' she said.
During the second batch, members from the first batch have the option of becoming facilitators who will be responsible for closely monitoring the participants' work throughout the program.
One of the members, Christwastuti Destriyani, 23, said she enjoyed her involvement in the community's events, adding that she got more out of them than she expected.
She first joined the community after her graduation from Brawijaya University in Malang, East Java, and wanted to make herself busy and find new friends while waiting to get a job.
'But it turned out that I also got tips and tricks about job interviews. I also got the chance to do more for the society. I never thought I could do that,' said Christwastuti, who won the 'Shining Sister' title during her participation in the Sisterhood Camp.
Moreover, she said, she also found support from the community to materialize her dream to become an author.
'I always want to be a writer. I've been writing since junior high school and also joined the press club in college. CeweQuat gives me the support that I need to keep going, Mbak Mega has even shared her tips on how to write books,' she said.
