07 May After Basara
Hadrian asked all the young people who received funding at the Basara project showcase to describe the outcome and their experience as a result. Guillaume, Anwar, Audrey & Rosalia, Hamdan, Osanne, Elias and Kibti had a chance to respond this time around.
In the lead up to the $100,000 Project Showcase at World Congress, I recently wrote all the young people who received a grant as part of the $10,000 Project Showcase at the 2017 Basara Youth gathering to invite them to give an update on their initiatives and experience of following their project A little money went a long way! And we all learned a lot. Here are the responses from those who provided them.
Enjoy! Hadrian.
Hello Hadrian, Yes. Promises promises, and I keep getting caught up in other things. Sorry! Here is my update on the Basara Grant.
Since the World Congress of Puebla in 2014, I’ve been pursuing, along with Pierce Vaughn, the idea to develop a travel show around the theme of traditional dances. The production of the first series, Finding The Warrior Within, was a success thanks to the support of many generous contributors (including SICA, GHFP and SYIA). While the series was done and ready in 2016, we were not sure of what the next step was going to be. We finally decided to launch the series on Youtube in early 2017. At that time I was in Basara, I still had dreams, but my savings were running short. I really didn’t want to divert my focus from the task ahead and thankfully, I diddn’t have to. I was granted 500 Dollars by SESI during Basara and promised to use this money on a social media advertising campaign for the upcoming months.
During the course of the next 8 weeks, 300 Dollars were used for ads (Facebook mainly), and 200 to pay some of my basic needs. The campaign was a success and collected over 15.000 Views on Youtube within the first 2 weeks! Subsequently, the Youtube series format attracted the interest of Ovation TV in the United States. Before you know it (well, at least after 6 months of discussion and 3 months of negotiations), we had signed up a licensing deal with Ovation, giving them the rights to release the series on their new Travel and Lifestyle streaming channel Journy (available U.S only).
For me this was a success. Not only in terms of getting some sort of closure on this project, but I have also got the opportunity to learn so much, acquire new skills and really motivate myself for the future. I realised how much I could achieve with a small budget, as long as I was willing to do some sacrifices and prioritise properly in my life. This motivation still lives on today, as I am about to embark in my next adventure. I have a new travel series concept, that I hope will eventually give the opportunity to expose Subud talents all over the World. But to find out more about this, you’ll have to come to the World Congress in Freiburg. In the meantime, keep on living, keep on dreaming and keep on sharing!
Best, Guillaume
Uplift Singing – 15 months on
Establishing a business from scratch guided by an inner feeling arising from the latihan has been an amazing journey for us both and ultimately one of growth. It has given us both a direct experience of the surrender and courage needed to create an entity that provides income in the outer world from guidance received in the inner feeling.
We found that the SESI project was extremely supportive both financially and by the validation we received in the project presentation and feedback sessions at Basara. It gave us a focal point and a goal to work towards and showed in a real way that the SESI Wing of Subud is alive and well and values the ideas and inspiration of Young Subud Members throughout the world.
Uplift Singing continues to be successful here in Tasmania with regular singing workshops and a new series starting in Hobart in May. We also plan to start a series in Southern Sydney later this year. Uplift continues to enrich our National Congresses here in Australia with a Congress Choir and performances at the Congress Music Cafe and will be greatly contributing to the SICA program at International Congress in Freiburg.
Our website is up at last! www.upliftsinging.com
Love, Audrey and Rosalia Lonergan
Dear Hadrian.
The Basara grant offered many things, namely;
– A platform to see other entrepreneurs within the Subud community
– Mentors who have succeeded
– Ongoing advice from said mentors
Realistically it is difficult to bootstrap any business when as a young entrepreneur we lack self-development or prior experience. This is why having mentors who have found success is such a big deal. Both the grant and mentorship helped me to realise that being in a business was not about seeking instant wealth – this may sound obvious but in a world run by social media, we tend to forget that business is a slow crawl. No, it was a slow dance which involved testing the market, planning and developing your selling tools. This is something the mentorship allowed me to learn and grant money was put to good use and spent sparingly over 6 months as I continued to test the market. As a result, we are now producing products that not only include clothing but encompass apparel, accessories as well as health and beauty – all slowly and with great planning.
Regards, Anwar
The Road Safety Educational Initiative
We have come a long way since the beginning of this journey, though we feel that, the more work we do in this project, the more we discover still needs to be done.
Our goal has been to prevent road accidents by encouraging the adoption of safety habits such as the use of helmets, reflective vests, and to adhere to overall traffic rules. We can see that we already have had a positive impact in the area and we are more motivated than ever to continue working and develop the 2nd phase of this initiative.
During the first phase of the Borneo Road Safety initiative, we carried out a number of workshops where we dug deeper into the understanding that the population of central Kalimantan has on road safety. This was done by hosting several workshops were kids were encouraging to speak about their experiences, to ask questions, as well as to be encouraged to purchase subsidised helmets and reflective vest.
Our message was also spread through social media, by creating a facebook page (which we encourage you all to visit and provide feedback), where we post videos and pictures aligned with our goal.
The overall population of central Kalimantan has been exposed to our Facebook videos, some of which reached up to 5000 views. In addition to this, kids and families living in the proximities around Rungan Sari, where we have also done workshops with the kids in the YUM community library (200 children), the youth of YUM vocational Training Centre (300 youth) and with the kids and youngsters in Borneo Football Internal Academy (BFIA (200 ).
The above operations have been driven in close collaboration with BFIA and YUM, however, none of this would have been possible without the support of SESI.
For the 2nd phase of this initiative, we will expand our team of volunteers by adding someone local in the executive team. This will allow us to be more agile in the way we operate. Furthermore, we want to streamline our message to potential donors and to broaden the reach of this campaign. As we want become a suitable project over time and be gradually less dependent on donations, we will also look into merging with other on-going projects, which are currently under review.
For more information, please do not hesitate to contact us via our facebook page or by email to Hamdanbustillo@gmail.com or borneoroadsafety@gmail.com
Our message was also spread through social media, by creating a facebook page (which we encourage you all to visit and provide feedback), where we post videos and pictures aligned with our goal.
The overall population of central Kalimantan has been exposed to our Facebook videos, some of which reached up to 5000 views. In addition to this, kids and families living in the proximities around Rungan Sari, where we have also done workshops with the kids in the YUM community library (200 children), the youth of YUM vocational Training Centre (300 youth) and with the kids and youngsters in Borneo Football Internal Academy (BFIA (200 ).
The above operations have been driven in close collaboration with BFIA and YUM, however, none of this would have been possible without the support of SESI.
For the 2nd phase of this initiative, we will expand our team of volunteers by adding someone local in the executive team. This will allow us to be more agile in the way we operate. Furthermore, we want to streamline our message to potential donors and to broaden the reach of this campaign. As we want become a suitable project over time and be gradually less dependent on donations, we will also look into merging with other on-going projects, which are currently under review.
For more information, please do not hesitate to contact us via our facebook page or by email to Hamdanbustillo@gmail.com or borneoroadsafety@gmail.com
Dear Hadrian 🙂
Basara has been a wonderful experience and a very dear memory quite alive. I had walked away with a wish to have more creativity around me and it’s shaping nicely, often by the lovely life miracles and gift that we often enjoy:
I am making my labyrinth that I had pitched, in a new form, as part of the Subud world Congress. It will be one of the spaces of je hall 2. This is done together with Guillaume Sanchez and I am enjoying working in pairs with someone as wonderful as him. It’s not one massive project but a continuous stream shaping step by step (something else I had received) I am also interviewing for a luxury house. A new job in a more creative and artistic industry (a further step in this direction?)
All my love
Osanne
Hi Hadrian,
I’m sorry this is delayed. I meant to send it through and got caught up.
I was very grateful to have received the SESI grant at Basara – unfortunately due to work commitments in a recently started engineering career, this project wasn’t able to be followed up on. I do however hope to come back to it, either to implement or contribute to a similar project further down the track. After discussion with yourself, we agreed it was best to donate the grant money directly to Yayasan Borneo Football International, as this was the charity that the football camp project was hoping to work with originally.
I very vividly remember George Demers (Subud Youth Chair) and the words he said to me with a smile on his face at Basara: “your passion and the thing you love to do is how you will touch people and make change in the world”. The SESI grant is an amazing initiative that really touched me at Basara and helped kindle a spirit of entrerprise in myself. I hope young people will make use of the opportunity this upcoming Congress to look at what is important to them and how SESI may help their projects come to life.
I look forward to seeing you at Congress!
Kind Regards, Elias
And finally, Kibti Martha has provided an update about her enterprise Kibti Furniture based in Central Java which has gone from strength to strength since Basara. Her story which is included here is well worth reading as an example of enterprise in Subud.
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