The Voice of Change social project initiated by a UGM student has been awarded the Best Social Project in the youth category during the Indonesian Culture and Nationalism (ICN) event lasting from 25-29 May. The award is an appreciation to students that have the spirit and contribution to develop the state through their innovations.
Voice of Change is a website portal by Abdullah Faqih, Sociology student, containing audiobooks or talking for the blinds. This stemmed from the concerns that he felt when seeing the low literacy access for the blind people. “Books in braille are very expensive and limited,” he said, “it also takes more time to read. So, using audio equipment is the right choice for them as almost 84% of the blind can hear,” he said on Monday (30/5).
Later, Faqih asked people who love reading a book to record their voice and send this to voiceforchange.com.
“Only by sending their voice when reading a book they can change the life of a blind man for better. That’s why this project is called as Voice for Change,” said the fourth semester student.
ICN is a national youth series of events organised by Student Board S1 of Prasetiya Mulya School of Business and Economics in Jakarta that aims at raising the spirit of the young to develop the country through social projects and build nationalism and love of culture. The events are ICN Festival, Food Exhibition, and ICN Conference.
In the ICN Conference, delegates of the ICN 2016 who represent 34 provinces in Indonesia presented their social projects to the expert juries, including academics from Universitas Prasetiya Mulya and Adi Putera Widjaja from Garudapreneur.
Culture and Education Minister Anies Baswedan presented the award to Faqih and four other winners in the category of environment, entrepreneurship, education, and socio-culture. Each is entitled to have IDR10 million in prize.