Indonesia Diaspora

I was lucky enough to be able to involve into The 2nd Earth Resilience Symposium, in Berlin on March 2nd-March 3rd 2013. The second Earth Resilience Symposium is a continuation of Vienna symposium and a contribution of the Indonesian Diaspora in Germany but also from other European countries particularly in science and research issues, the Embassy of the Republic of Indonesia in Berlin, Germany, supported by Ikatan Ilmuwan Indonesia Internasional and in cooperation with the Center for Oceanography and Marine Technologyof Surya University, Indonesian Diaspora Network in Germany and Indonesian Student Association in Europe is organizing the second Earth Resilience Symposium in Berlin, Germany.

The topics for this year’s symposium are climate change and climate protection, energy security, food security, natural disaster management. The participants have to send their academic papers related to one of those topics to be able to involve into the symposium. This symposium is aiming to create a roadmap that can be used as a reference for Indonesia in the future to face problems on climate, energy and food problems and natural catastrophes. The second earth resilience symposium in Berlin was held as a comprehensive partnership among the Indonesian societies in Germany and Indonesia as well as research and academic research institution in Germany, Netherlands and Austria.

I might say that this event is a really good event to get Indonesian diaspora especially Indonesian scholars in abroad to have a place to meet, to discuss, and to find some recommendations for the government of Republic Indonesia to face some urgent problems. This kind of event is also good to avoid a kind of brain drain that potentially happen for Indonesia because this event successfully calling all Indonesian to contribute to their countries and having a place to put their ideas and solutions towards several Indonesia’s problems.

This event helps Indonesia Diasporas to face their problems to contribute for their country. The problems of Indonesian Diasporas abroad are sometimes they are very brilliant, working on a variety of important research institutions abroad, a lecturer at world class universities, and even building mega projects across major corporation in the world yet they are having difficulty to apply their knowledge in their own countries due to lack of infrastructure, technology, lack of policy enforcement, difficulty in dealing with bureaucratic system, and low of appreciation for them to work on their own country, while in other countries they get all the easy access and high respect.

People often mistakenly blame them as “Kacang Lupa Kulit” or having lack of nationalism because they worked abroad, yet mostly people don’t know how hard they want to contribute to Indonesia yet facing many problems to realize it. Some of them fight back by finding another way to get attention from the governments by doing this kind of events. Thus all the rumors about Indonesia diaspora are sometimes not true. It’s not because they don’t want to come back, but it’s hard for them to come back to apply their knowledge to Indonesia.

Luckily, the output of the 2nd Earth Resilience Symposium will be published in a scientific document (book and journal paper) that can be accessed by public, especially in Indonesia. We also had an opportunity to meet the President of Republic of Indonesia and having discussion with him.

In my opinion, the Indonesia diaspora should do this kind of event more often while also ideally the government giving support to this event thus there will be formed a good triangulation communication amidst people in Indonesia, governments, and also Indonesian diasporas abroad. Thus we can optimize it and together we build Indonesia. We should stop to condemn the problems of Indonesia and started to do some real solutions. It’s because at the end, action speaks louder than merely a talk.