West Papua has many potentials within its land. Not only rich in natural resources such as gold and silver, but also it has many potential young people with a bright mind. One of the young promising talents is Simon Tabuni.
Who is Simon Tabuni
Simon Tabuni is a young man from West Papua, he is an achiever of LPDP Scholarship from Indonesia Government. For information, LPDP is a national organisation in Indonesia under the ministry of monetary. Their responsibility is to manage the fund for education. At least 20% fund from APBN has to be allocated for educational program. One of their programs is LPDP scholarship.
LPDP Scholarship
LPDP Scholarship is divided to Affirmation Scholarship, Targeted Group Scholarship and General Scholarship. One of the focus areas in Affirmation Scholarship is to reach out students from East of Indonesia, like West Papua. This scholarship helps the students to go to study within Indonesia and also abroad. It is a dream come true for the students who succeed to achieve it.
This scholarship will cover all of the study expense (tuition, books, thesis, journal), living expense, transportation expense, training, visa, and many more. This is a prestigious scholarship because they offer a lot of things for the achiever. In this way, the students can learn without worry and live comfortably. That is why many students are competing for this scholarship. After graduate, they will contribute to the homeland with their experience and knowledge they have acquired.
Simon Tabuni’s Journey
It was not an easy journey for Simon Tabuni to successfully achieve this scholarship. He worked arduously to achieve his dream. Several times, he joined several English competitions, but he failed every time. Thus, he feels like he had to improve his English. Especially he has his dream to continue his study overseas.
These failures were the fuel for him to never give up to learn from his mistakes and improve from there. His determination led him to finally achieve this prestigious scholarship, and ultimately made his dream came true, to continue his study in School of Oriental and African Study (SOAS), University of London.
Back to West Papua and the Contribution of Simon Tabuni
After Simon Tabuni finished his study in England, he came back to Indonesia to dedicate himself for his hometown in West Papua.
In here, he made a youth community named “Papua Inspiratif”. In this community, Simon initiated a program such as “Angkat Mama Papua”.
“Angkat Mama Papua” is an entrepreneurship program to help the economy of mothers in West Papua, who lives in the hinterland (especially in Arfak mountain).
This program works by helping to open the marketing way through social media and push the making of processed product.
He has concerned in the advancement of the young people in West Papua by forming a movement called Fasilitasi Kreatifitas dan Inovatif Anak Papua (Fastra). In English, it means to facilitating the creativity and innovation of Papua child.
This movement is aiming to search and facilitated young talents from West Papua. Through it, he hopes the potential within the young generation including hobbies and enjoyment can be turned into something productive and have economic value. When the economic value is created, automatically it will open a new job field.
He doesn’t stop there, Simon Tabuni also has a goal to make his environment better. Thus, he formed an environment program called “Revitalisasi Taman dan Fungsinya” (Remang). In English it means revitalisation of park and its function. This movement is aiming to reactivated and revitalised the function of city park, therefore the park can be used for many useful things for the community.
According to Simon Tabuni, all this time this park is only functioned as a recreational place. Whereas they can also use this park to do many things for the sake of community development. For instance, in the future this park will be integrated with development and empowerment of micro economic. This micro economic will be enforced by the community around this park.
Because of his contribution to develop West Papua, Simon is granted an award of Tokoh Pemuda Inspiratif in an event of Papua Barat Innovation Award in 2020. He hopes many of young generation in West Papua will be inspired and motivated to bring a positive impact to their homeland.
Conclusion:
It is important for young people to inspires their peer to develop their town. West Papua has bright people with an incredible motivation to develop their town, like Simon Tabuni. With the help of LPDP Scholarship, not only he can achieve his dream to study abroad, but also he came back to develop West Papua and make his community better. He shares his ideas for the sake of the growth of his country in general, and West Papua in specific. He is one of the examples of promising young talent in Indonesia.
