Responsibility; Embracing the Sustainable Development

The challenging and opportunity of young’s Indonesia toward

ASEAN community 2007

by; Andrie Husein

“Zamrud Khatulistiwa”, is the sobriquet which known for Indonesia on the world. It is explain to us, Indonesia is a beautiful place, with a lot of natural resources in. But, beside this Indonesia is the country which have much social problem. Poverty, low human resources, and educational degradation is the most Indonesian social problems. Decade 1980, Indonesia is the rich country with exported rice to other country on the world and that age as well as called The Golden Age. After multi crisis, Indonesia was became the one of poor countries, BPS was wrote Indonesian poor peoples are 129.6 million peoples or 66.3 % from the population of Indonesia. 1

Low human resources is the one of Indonesian social problems, was possibly a half of employees in Indonesia are elementary school graduates. Human Development Index (HDI) mentioned, Indonesian development rank is (102) below from the development countries (southeast Asian region), such as; Singapore (26), Malaysia (56), Thailand (66) and Philippines (70). 2

Most of Indonesian economic scholars explained, in disorder of economic development system, policy ,and bad management was reason the social problems in Indonesia. Those problem was added with much obligation of Indonesian government with World Bank and IMF. Social welfare development is the concept was recommended as a development approach from welfare state. This is the alternative concept to alleviate poverty, low human resources, and educational degradation and refers to balancing of economic growth, and social development. H. Wayne Johnson explained in his book “Social Service; An Introduction”; “Social welfare refers to societal organized activities aimed at maintaining or improving human well-being.” 3

Social welfare development always refers to sustainable development, which designed to maximize the positive impact of social development activities while minimizing possible negative effects of economic growth. Young’s Indonesia are the core power for embracing the sustainable

development. First president of Indonesia, Soekarno said; “give me ten young’s, and we can change the world”. This statement evidence the young’s power is needed for empowering and developing Indonesian. Based on above statement, a number of concerns need to be kept in mind in formulating policies for the future. And young’s Indonesia ability are needed to become a policy maker, political leader, and community and economic developer. Good governance for all institutions, and sustainable evaluation will bring Indonesia to the future centuries and best member of ASEAN community.

Sustainable development has been formed with two core strategy. First, internal; transparency report from all state departments and provides policy guidance for political action at the highest levels with assumption achieving the political and social stability in which productive enterprises can develop and grow. Second, external; human development must take center stage, develop quality of education and health care, and for industry sector must be responsible to social and environment aspect then business focus. Who the actor for this actions?, the answer is young’s ASEAN, it’s young’s time to seize this problem, to secure our future and to join ASEAN efforts to alleviate poverty, unemployment, and educational degradation. Development in Indonesia is development for other countries, a specially ASEAN countries.

1 Edi Suharto, Analisis Kebijakan Sosial, Refika Aditama, Bandung; 2005. p. 19

2 UNDP, Human Depelopment Reports 2001 (Making new technologies work for human development), Oxford University Press, New

York; 2001. p. 141-144 3 H. Wayne Johnson, The Social Services (An Introduction). Illionis: F. E. Peacock Publishers, Inc. (Fourth Edition). 1995. p. 26