Middle-aged housewife Wagiyem of Bambanglipuro in Bantul regency, Yogyakarta, looked satisfied as she watched the ice-cream machine spin two containers of ice cream that she had prepared together with other housewives of Sidomulyo subdistrict.

A little further, 22-year-old Sheila Reswari expressed similar satisfaction. She occasionally glanced at Wagiyem, who affectionately talked to her 12-year-old son playing around the place, who has Down'€™s syndrome.

'€œThis is the final stage of the production. We only need to wait 15 more minutes to finish it,'€ Sheila, who recently graduated from Gadjah Mada University'€™s (UGM) School of Economics, majoring in management, said over the weekend.

Grouped under Osiris, a social business entity aimed at empowering a disabled community in Sidomulyo, Shiela and her friends Aldo Egi Ibrahim and Ali Bahtiar Sirry recently won the Young Social Entrepreneurs (YSE) 2015 award from the Singapore International Foundation (SIF), along with six other winners.

Aldo is also a fresh graduate of UGM'€™s School of Economy, majoring in accountancy, while Ali is
a fresh graduate of UGM'€™s School of Social and Political Sciences, majoring in social development and wealth. All three of them completed their degrees at the prestigious university in December last year.

Through Osiris, they have been empowering members of Bangkit Maju, an association of disabled people in Sidomulyo, by helping them produce dragon fruit ice cream, which the group then sells at a store on UGM'€™s campus in Sleman regency, Yogyakarta.

Bangkit Maju chairman Joko Susilo said he warmly welcomed Osiris because of the group'€™s good objectives in helping empower members of his association generate additional income.

'€œSo far, only five of our members are involved in the business, but we very much hope that more members will get involved as the business grows,'€ Joko, who has a disabled left hand, said.

He added it was also because of this hope that he had let Osiris a plot in his yard to build a facility that would better meet the required standards for an ice cream production site.

'€œThe people here are very accommodative,'€ Sheila said.

YSE 2015 is not the first award Osiris has received. In the same year, the group won the ASEAN Young Socialpreneur Competition 2015 organized by UMG in September 2015, beating 224 other teams from different universities in ASEAN countries and Timor Leste. The award also earned Osiris US$ 2,500 and a year of business coaching from Shell Indonesia.

Earlier last year, Osiris won a competition organized by Danone Indonesia, which came with Rp 15 million ($1,075) in prize money, which the group used as starting capital for their business in Sidomulyo.

'€œIt is an honor for us to win YSE 2015. We have learned so many things from the program,'€ Sheila said.

Sheila said that after a series of a stages, Osiris was selected among 15 finalists of YSE 2015, which included five other projects from Indonesia aside from Osiris. The other nine finalists were from Malaysia, Singapore, India, Hong Kong and Vietnam.

Out of the 15 finalists, she said, six winners were named, including three from Indonesia. The other two Indonesian winners are Startic, which makes bags from cement sacks and Ecodow, which produces souvenirs from fleece and roots.

Sheila said all YSE 2015 finalists were given mentors and opportunities to travel to a number of countries to learn more about running a social enterprise and to implement what they had learned during a workshop organized by the SIF in Singapore.

These mentoring and traveling events were held over a period of eight months from February to October 2015. The winners, she said, were announced by the end of the program.

Apart from that, Osiris was also granted a S$20,000 ($13,941) prize to help the group further develop their social business.

'€œBut what impressed us most was the experience we had while joining the eight-month program, especially the cross-cultural understanding we had never learned about or experienced before,'€ Shiela said.

During the program, she said, all the finalists were given the opportunity to interact with one another
and to exchange experience and knowledge on how to better run their businesses.

'€œEven up until today I still correspond with some of them,'€ she said.

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