'What I’ve learned' is a column that presents candid interviews with policymakers, artists, activists and businesspeople on facing challenges and making a difference.

Sherwin Ufi is not your average civil servant. But then again, Rote Ndao, East Nusa Tenggara, is not your average island. To say that Sherwin is a force of nature would be an understatement. He is dedicated to the communities and children of Rote Ndao. The current division head of Governance and Human Development for the Agency for Regional Planning, Research and Development in Rote Ndao could have gone anywhere after he graduated from Australian National University with a master’s in public health, but instead, he returned to his hometown and helped position Rote Ndao as one of the most strategically agile local governments in Indonesia, ready to manage a complex and fast-changing environment for the direct benefit of its citizens.

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You need to bring your heart to work with you every day. You also need to know that you are not alone. There are good people all around us. People who want to take care of one another.

Government work and social work are different. Volunteering is different from being a civil servant. But my experience as a volunteer drives the way I see the work I do every day with the government. I’m putting in more time because I’m getting more out of it. The communities I work for are also part of me. I deliver for them because they deliver for me.

Now we’re dealing with stunting and the elimination of maternal and infant mortality. Some people just see moms and kids. But you need to see it like those moms, those kids, they are your brothers and sisters, or your mom…your kids.

When we are dealing with kids or mothers here in Rote, I treat them like family. I fight for them the way I would fight for my own family.

Here in Rote, every pregnant mother is our mother. Every newborn is our brother or our sister.

It’s not just me. There are a lot of us here in Rote who received an Australia Awards scholarship. And we all returned to Rote to serve our community, working in the government. We’re committed to serving our community and contributing to Rote and our country.

Working in the government means you are working based on regulations. You are obligated to work within the regulations. A lot of civil servants want to work wholeheartedly and serve their communities, but the regulations don’t allow them to go above and beyond.

So, in Rote we try to think about our obligations, and then use that mental model to build our regulations.

In Rote, we enacted a new policy where the head of the village can’t replace frontline community health workers, kader. Throughout Indonesia, every time there’s a new head of village elected, he would replace the frontline community health workers. So no one wanted to train them because they would just be replaced in a few years’ time. But we designed and passed a policy to keep trained and confident kader in their positions, regardless of the election of the village head.

The policy was issued in December. We have more than 2,000 kader on Rote, and 90 percent of them have been trained. The policy is focused on efficiency. Every year we have to earmark a budget line for training community health workers. And now we know that money is going to improve outcomes and build on education and experience.

For me it all started when I volunteered at the Youth Community for Rote Ndao. I was 30 at the time. One of the reasons I joined was because we question our existence. Why are we here? What are we contributing to Rote? I have a mission. I need to do something here, otherwise, why am I here? We opened more than 30 reading rooms in Rote. We’ve collected more than 20,000 books. The Kick Andy Foundation helped us. The results were beyond expectation.

When I visited the kids…and seeing their faces when we gave them books. I could see that I was contributing to the community. Their faces just lit up. I knew I was on the right track.

Working as a civil servant means you need to broaden your perspective, you don’t just work for the government, you work for the citizens. You have to think like the citizens. Without that you will never find the energy and drive to deliver to your neighbors.

But I have to admit, without the continuous support from my family, particularly my wife, without her, none of this would be possible. My wife lives in Kupang. I stay in Rote, we do everything we can to see each other, but this is challenging. Luckily, I have a life partner whose support is unparalleled, and this is what you need during the ups and downs of life.

Activism is only a visible manifestation of what’s at the core of our being, and it becomes this thing that guides and moves us. I call it idea capital. When the air is misty, what a fisherman needs to get home is not a ship or a fast boat, but a lighthouse.

It’s easy to get caught in the polarization of working inside or outside of the system, like patching a leaky ship or jumping ship to save yourself. I don't see it that way. That is a faraway analogy when it comes to what we talk about when we talk about making changes.

Activism is the manifestation of the totality of being oneself in any given circumstance. It is the aggregation of our physical and agile existence in various environments united by common goals as idea capital.  So, being a volunteer or being in a government environment is a medium for that realization. What we need in activism are ideas and social capital.

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