JP/Nurhayati

Sporting a black pencil skirt and a sleeveless top, fresh-faced Veronica Colondam looks like a 20 something model with her long hair, clear skin, slim and long legs.

At a first glance, people who don’t know her might think just that. They might be surprised to learn that she is married with three children.

They would be even more surprised to find out just how much she has done for many of the country’s children and teenagers.

The woman is the chief executive officer of Yayasan Cinta Anak Bangsa (YCAB) or the Loving the Nation’s Children Foundation, an NGO that is concerned about drug problems among Indonesian youth.

Veronica or Vera was a stay-at-home young mom with young children before she decided to establish the foundation in 1999.

A year before, she was busy thinking about what she would do for her life.

“I felt that I needed to create meaning in my life,” said Vera, who wanted to be a doctor when she was a little girl.

“So at that point of time, I thought about what I could possibly do to benefit my children, while at the same time benefiting other kids.”

After extensive research, she discovered that drug abuse was the big issue among youth in Indonesia.

That was when she started to dedicate her life to fighting drug abuse by focusing on the prevention of drugs abuse.

“Why do we focus on preventive measures? Because the primary prevention of drug abuse is not even there,” said the mother of two boys and a girl.

“When it comes to drugs, people usually only know about rehabilitation and treatment. They never think about how to prevent it. In fact, this [drug abuse] can be prevented,” she said.

She claimed that she had no personal experience of drugs.

“Neither have I used drugs nor had family members or friends who were addicted to drugs. I just feel like I need to do something in my life. This will be my legacy.”

When Vera was in high school, she wanted to be an interior designer and applied for a seat in a university in Canada. But the death of her father had changed her destiny.

“It was the weakest moment of my life. My whole world collapsed. Could I actually do this? Now who’s going to pay my tuition?” she said.

She decided to take a year off before taking the next step. Vera, who said that she used to call herself “a born-scientist”, surprised herself by enrolling in a public relations and mass communications program.

“I later thought that was kind of fun. I fell in love with communications. I thought that this was a fascinating idea. I learned a lot on how to communicate a company or product to people.”

She made the right choice as the social science proved useful in developing a social organization.

Through YCAB, Vera is aiming to warn youngsters to be more careful, shaping them to be resilient, saying she wants young people to make better and smart choices, as well as engage in positive lifestyles.

“In your life, at some point, you’ll be offered drugs. When you get the offer, what will you do? Are you going to accept it or are you going not refuse it?”

“When you accept it, do you know that there are consequences, like health, economic and social consequences? If you don’t accept it, that’s great because there are many other things you can do in your life. You are still young.”

Parents, she said, have a big role in preventing drug abuse problems.

 “Parents should be careful when their children are in the golden years, which we believe is between 10 and 13. A kid who has smoked cigarettes during these years tends to also try drug.”

The most important thing, she added, parents should take right steps to handle kids with different characters. Different personalities take different approach.

Vera, for instance, has her own way in explaining the drug abuse issue to her kids.

“My eldest son, for instance, is the kind of boy who can stay away from drug as I told him it was dangerous,” she said.

“But my youngest kid is totally different. He tends to be edgy. Sometimes these kinds of people know that they are smart and know what to choose, but they just want to be edgy.

They need good reasons why they should not into it.”  

Vera and her team have campaigned about healthy lifestyles in many schools to combat the drug abuse problem.

She learned that poverty was one reason why drugs were difficult to eradicate, saying that student dropouts from poor families were more at risk from becoming drug abusers.

“We believe that we can close the risk factor by giving them chances to go to school by establishing rumah belajar [study houses]. Besides, we also aim to give the graduates decent jobs.”

Hand-in-hand with some businessmen, like hairstylist Rudy Hadisuwarno and fashion designer Sebastian Gunawan, YCAB have also trained hundreds of thousands of youth nationwide as an effort to combat drug abuse problem among street children.

Now, it’s been a decade since Vera started to develop the foundation. As a person, she said that she had achieved beautiful integration.

But in the case of her works, she said that she wanted to do more and more, as she realized that the foundation had yet to make it to the national level.

According to YCAB recent data, there are about 120 young people per hour that experiment with drugs, while YCAB disperses information about the danger of drug use for 10 youths per hour.

Besides, there are 1.1 million of drop-out children per year, while rumah belajar capacity is 3,000 students per year.

“When you compare it to the real problem, it might be just like a cup of tea floating in the ocean. But with limited resources, I’m pretty happy with things that we have accomplished.

“If you look into each individual, it’s like you are changing the world of this one person.

A kid who used to live on the streets, for instance, now can work as a shop attendant in a
shopping center. This is wonderful.”

In the future, she hoped that YCAB could scale up its programs to the national level, as well as maintain its sustainability.

Meanwhile, even though Vera has been very busy with YCAB’s programs, she has not neglected her motherly duties.

“My kids are already in the critical years so I have to be at home more than anything.

It would be stupid if I paid attention to the nation’s children, while in the same time abandoning my own children. I need to be there for them.”

Therefore, she prefers just lay low at home in her spare time, hanging out with her children.

   
Photo by JP/Nurhayati

Biography

Name        : Veronica Colondam

Place/date of birth     : Medan, Feb. 12, 1972

Husband         : Pieter Tanuri

Education        
Master of Science in Alcohol and Drugs: Policy and Intervention, Imperial College London and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicines (2006)
Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communications and Public Relations,American University (2000)
Diploma in Public Relations, Interstudy College of Public Relations, Jakarta (1992)


Awards
* UN-Vienna Civil Society Award, Vienna (2001)
* Presidential National Gold Award on Drug Abuse Prevention (2003)
* Social Innovator Park Fellow Award, Singapore (2008)
  

Popular

Fuel price hike in the cards if budget ‘can’t bear’ oil subsidy

Literate, independent and abused: Indonesian women’s hidden reality

Women question legal protection as gender violence rages on