Words from an Indonesian born abroad !
For all that don′t know me, I am Damy Heezen, 42 years old, born in Holland and living in Indonesia almost for 2 years. For more information, read my articles on my LinkedIn or go to our website of our company to check our partners and our blogs.
Before your read this I would like to ask you to watch this music video made by an amazing group of people in 2016 to create a movement in Indonesia ′GIVE BACK INDONESIA′. This message motivated and inspired me emotionally do anything and everything to succeed in our mission. Personally all I do, is not for money or status, but for making a change in this world as long as I am alive by sharing my knowledge and experiences I learned in life with everyone!
My motivation!
Indonesia is growing and changing very fast in many ways like in population, culture, infrastructure, energy, food supply, education and so much more. More than 100 yrs we have focused on developing the big metropolises like Jakarta and Medan. Cities like Surabaya, Malang, Balikpapan, Bogor, Bandung and many more are now on edge to start boosting in short time. 250 million Indonesian citizens and growing faster as ever, also needs infrastructures like roads, industrial areas, agriculture, aquaculture, healthcare, education and all that is needed for the Indonesian population to have a good life. It is uncontrollably growing! Time is precious and Indonesia is now acting impulsively on accusations from other countries about polluting, corruption, food security, healthcare, education and more. Our metropolises always grow with the support of most of these countries, but do we still need their advice or do we just need their knowledge and financial support. In this article I want to give and explain my vision about what we could do and how to let Indonesia grow in benefit of all their people within the key factors PEOPLE, PLANET AND PROFIT!
Many of our children of the last generations, studied abroad and have a different image of what is right and wrong for Indonesia. This gives a lot of conflicts between the generations that are now trying to continue family cooperation or to align government goals in Indonesia. And some of us were born on the other side of the world, because of the colonial history of Indonesia. We are born abroad, but raised with the culture and love for the country of our ancestors Indonesia. We have been raised with Indonesian values like in Holland and because of that we never felt like it was our home. We saw so many big differences between Dutch culture and Indonesian culture and we struggled a lot to make a living in our country. We saw Holland change from a very prosperous country with a lot development for the benefit of their citizens into a country that seems very corrupt and inhuman. We never understood why Western countries technologies and knowledge about infrastructure development, education, government laws and more was implemented in Indonesia like as they did it here. We had one big question as Dutch Indonesians.
′How can a country with 16 million people tell a country with 250 million people how to develop the best way!′
Off course we saw how Indonesia changed from a distance and we saw all the western news about the bad things in Indonesia like pollution, corruption, religious riots, job security and all this news always made us feel very sad. In our education from our parents and grandparents that mostly are all born in Indonesia we have been taught how beautiful and different Indonesia is compared to Holland. Some of us, like me, we outgrow the barriers of status and elite that still controls Holland a lot. People from abroad that think Holland is one big free country for everyone with equal chances for everyone..... well they are very very very wrong. Yes that′s what we try to show to other countries, but in fact we have the same problems as Indonesia if its about corruption, manipulation of citizens, pollution, religious problems and job security. In Holland I grow from a local construction worker to a respected business man that closely worked with local governments and advised a lot big companies in HRM, community development and project management. One day I ran against a wall of corruption, one of the size that you would never imagine that would be possible. One that even people like our mayor could not fight against. Because of that and because of a promise to someone close to me that died, I decided to stop focus on helping people in Holland and moved to Indonesia to start all over in benefit of Indonesia and motivated by the love for Indonesia and my ancestors.
My opinion of Indonesia !
Like all other countries, Indonesia have challenges and some of them seem impossible or very hard to solve. Money, knowledge and unorganized supervision prevent us to solve these issues and because we are already counting on Western governments and companies for more than 100 years, automatically we ask them to help us in these matters. We often see their countries as an example of how we want to develop Indonesia for the future, but what we don′t realize is that we are destroying Indonesia with that ! Take Jakarta as example that is built and developed with their help and let us compare it with those countries that helped us in this. Jakarta have many issues like traffic, corruption, pollution, food security, jobs and more and we hope that western countries can help us solve this. Well this is a wake up call from me THEY CAN′T HELP! Off course you want to know why I say this and I will explain; Their own metropolises with mostly less than 1 million citizens have exactly the same infrastructural problems as Jakarta and they cannot solve it ! I lived there, helped them and saw from close that they cannot do it! YES they try and yes they have innovated good proven sustainable solutions, but most of all these solutions are not implemented because of the same issues in Jakarta and that is mainly that the settled order of the past that are trying to protect their business. Most people would call it corruption, but I think it is more about money control and protect this money. Take my city in Holland as example, they are number 5 in the world of most sustainable cities if it is about environment, social economy and people and comparing with Jakarta on number 43 that seems a big difference. But what if we also take the numbers 2.5% of our city is most sustainable and 0.8% of Jakarta ...... so on the scale of 100% I dare to say Sustainability doesn't exist there and they cannot help Jakarta or any other city in Indonesia to solve their issues the most sustainable way. Do you agree ?
My vision about what to do?
Off course I have reasons to tell what was said above and I would not have said it if I have no clue how to do it. Mentioning problems and why things are impossible is very easy, but to also come with a possible solution is most wanted and obligated when people like me burn things down. I am CEO of a company that help in this, but this article was not written for marketing, so I will try to tell how without selling our company. In these 2 years in Indonesia I have seen so many amazing solutions from local companies that have proven technologies that suit the Indonesian infrastructure and population very well to solve most of the issues that now seem to be impossible to solve. Our company focuses on key factors for solutions that it is proven technology, faster applied, better quality and most important of all that it is cheaper as conventional solutions. Worldwide we gathered solutions that with a little education and training can be implemented to solve the most common issues of Indonesia even in remote areas. We believe that these solutions do not need high tech development or a lot money to implement, but what they do need is supervision and management in organizing these kind of solutions. Simply said, all we need to solve the problems of Indonesia is already here and we if we just combine, organize and supervise this then we can help millions of people with a better world in their environment, social economy and food security in a very short time with less money then we think of now. And for the issues we have in existing infrastructures we can do exactly the same in cooperation of many expert worldwide by knowledge exchange. PROVEN, CHEAPER, FASTER and HIGHER QUALITY then most conventional techniques we use now.
Instead of trying to get projects for our company, we have decided to first give seminars and workshops as we did in March for WINTEX 2018 at ITB in Bandung and many other places. We did this to create awareness about real sustainable development for students and professionals, that want to change Indonesia to a more sustainable world. While doing this we have discovered that there are many professionals in Indonesia that agree with us and started helping us because of our shared vision. The mission we have chosen is not easy, because we are not bringing western technologies of 20 years ago like many others, but we bring knowledge about tomorrow and how to create a real sustainable world for our children and their children. Our company, all partners and friends believe that together we can solve any issue in Indonesia by teaching local companies how to implement technologies for tomorrow, how to manage these and if need we can also rise money for this to do it in cooperation with local and national government of Indonesia. If you want to become part of this movement, please feel free to add me on LinkedIn or invite us to give a seminar for your city decision makers or to give a presentation about sustainable solutions for your company.
LET US CREATE A BETTER INDONESIA FOR OUR CHILDREN !