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ith the majority of Jakartans spending their leisure time on themselves after hours of working and commuting, some put aside their personal needs and spare time to help others with various issues, from improving their health to promoting their musical talent.

Andi Angger Sutawijaya, a 28-year-old private employee who lives in South Jakarta, said that having a family and a full-time job at a welfare agency did not keep him from lending a helping hand to countless causes.

Angger has been involved in various programs such as free health consultation, free education, long-term development programs for remote villages and much more. His volunteer work is mainly located in Banten, but he also sometimes visits other places.

“I left my wife behind to go on a two-week volunteer trip to Padang, West Sumatra, one day after we got married,” Angger chuckled, giving an example of his busy volunteer activities. “I am so thankful that my family is supportive of my volunteer activities.”

Now and then he thinks about quitting his volunteer work and looking for a better career. “My job pays me enough, but I have no savings for me or my family,” he said. “Nevertheless, I will always stay on the volunteer path because I want to leave behind something good for my kids and the next generation.”

Meanwhile, Hilmiatun Nisa, a 23-year-old IT consultant who works in Kuningan, South Jakarta, has been active in volunteer programs since she was in college. At first she was not overly involved, but now she cannot stay away from the values of altruism.   

She even took two weeks’ leave from her job to participate in a volunteer program focusing on elementary education in a remote village in Pandeglang, Banten, in 2016.

“The villagers had never hosted outsiders before. They thought we were going to evict them because we came from the city,” she said. “They were scared and wouldn’t talk to us until their children finally told them we taught at their school.”

She is active in her office’s corporate social responsibility programs, some of which have included building a mosque at a retirement home and distributing rice to the less fortunate.

“Volunteering is my way of discovering what is not right around me and learning about it so I can disseminate information about the problems and solve them,” she said.

Fifty-year-old Chico Hindarto, on the other hand, became involved in a volunteer program that he previously worked on for years in the late 1980s.

Chico, who participated in a two-month exchange program to the United States in 1987, has been chairing the city chapter of a volunteer organization since 2010.

The organization groups people of various backgrounds who aim to promote Indonesian cultures to fellow Indonesians and to people from different countries through student exchange programs.

“What we do in the organization does not show immediate impacts. But eventually the people involved generally say that they have learned a lot by participating in its activities and want to be active in the organization again, just like me,” Chico said.

Chico, who has two full-time jobs as a commissioner of a family-owned business and a lecturer, still found time to establish another non-profit foundation to promote new musicians.

“As a music enthusiast, I often see good musicians who do not get proper recognition. So I founded a non-profit recording company. So far, we have promoted more than 30 singers and musicians,” said Chico, who earns no revenue from the foundation as he gives all the profits to the singers and musicians.(dea)