Yogyakarta, October 1st 2020 – This year, Sociopreneur Muda Indonesia or SOPREMA back again. SOPREMA is a national annual program by Youth Studies Centre (YouSure) FISIPOL UGM involving youth aged 16-30 years to contribute in solving social problems through social entrepreneurship. In accordance with its purpose, SOPREMA opens wide opportunities and encourages youth throughout Indonesia to create business models by seeing social problems as opportunities for community empowerment, so that entrepreneurship can provide benefits to society.
Entering its fifth year of implementation, SOPREMA—in collaboration with the Ministry of Youth and Sports and Bank BRI—made adjustments in its series of activities so that it remains relevant to the conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic. Apart from raising the issue of the COVID-19 pandemic in the objectives and theme of activities, SOPREMA also conducted a whole series of activities online. There were at least five series in the SOPREMA 2020, they were competition, incubation, webinar, expo, and media talk. For the beginning, SOPREMA held a webinar called Youth 5.0: The Pros and Cons of a Sociopreneur in a Collaborative Era to Wake Up from the Pandemic. In this webinar, there were five expert speakers from various stakeholders that presented to question the importance of collaboration in efforts to rise from the pandemic that occurred.
Moderated by Mashita Fandia, the lecturer of Communication Science of UGM, many of the speakers in this webinar talked about the topics based on their experiences in certain fields. But before that, the webinar was started by the opening speech from Muhammad Najib Azca as the Director of YouSure and Prof. Dr. Erwan Agus Putranto, as the Dean of FISIPOL UGM. Not to forget, the moderator also explained a little about the theme and conditions of the webinar, the terms and conditions of door prizes, before inviting the speakers to deliver the material.
As an academic who is active in sociopreneurs issues, Hempri Suyatna—the first speaker—talked much about the urgentities of sociopreneurship, especially for Indonesian youths. From those urgencies SOPREMA presents with its vision and mission Hempri also explained the development of SOPREMA from year to year, including the series of events in SOPREMA 2020.
“The spirit that SOPREMA brings is in line with the Ministry of Youth and Sports in supporting and enhancing individual capacities related to sociopreneurship,” Imam Gunawan said, the Assistant Deputy of Youth Entrepreneurship, as the representative of the government—especially the Ministry of Youth and Sports. The government also does several efforts to realize its spirit, including fully supporting SOPREMA. Imam also explained why cooperation from all parties is important in developing sociopreneurship in the society.
The three other speakers were the representatives of the people who are active in sociopreneurship activities. Fathin Naufal, the founder of Gifood which has been included in SOPREMA 2018, explained much about his start-up—Gifood and Widya Edutech—adapted and contributed for society in the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, Denok Marty, a sociopreneur as well as an environmental activist, shared much about her point of view in seeing the waste problem as a potency and strength that needed to be managed. With the waste management activities that he and his team carried out in Kampung Kitiran, there were many positive impacts from various aspects that the people felt.
For the closing, Ucup Klaten, a content creator, shared his stories about his experience in utilizing social media, such as YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, both before and after the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Before that, Ucup used social media to promote his businesses, in this pandemic time he fully utilized his social media. Especially after joining a video competition about social distancing and mudik restriction, he got many positive responses from various parties. From there, his social media was getting crowded and he got many job offers from the government agencies.
After concluding all the materials from all speakers, the moderator read out the questions that had been submitted since the beginning of the presentation of the material, both on Zoom and YouTube comment sections. As stated earlier, the eight selected questions are entitled to get a doorprize from SOPREMA. The door prize submission mechanism was explained by the moderator after all the questions were answered by the speakers. With thanks to all the speakers and participants, the moderator officially closed the webinar on 12.40 p.m. Reruns of the SOPREMA Webinar can be watched on the FISIPOL UGM Youtube channel.