Hi, I’m Cheryl Loemantoro from Grade 9B of Sekolah Ciputra, and this article is about something that definitely changed my academic experience this semester! At the start of the year, we were sent an email from the OSIS community about an opportunity to initiate our own club, where we had the complete freedom to express a shared interest within the school. A few of my friends and I thought it was an excellent idea to start our own club together. While a couple of ideas were thrown out, we all agreed quickly that we have one shared interest and that is to bring action upon today’s world problems. With the additional time during quarantine, we all have been educating ourselves about issues that need our attention, and we wanted to educate others too! So the name Activision emerged, which comes from Activism-Action-Vision.

It started with the four of us: Brenda Young Hadisujono (9B), Alexandra Toal (9B), Julia Alma Baschieri (9A) and myself. We had a clear vision of spreading awareness, thus we started planning out the actions that can be taken under Activision and later inviting more friends to join too. As of now, we have 22 members in our club, and our progress has been beyond our expectations! So, what exactly did we do and are currently doing? Our framework of actions starts with fundraisers; each month we set a different theme for the club to pursue, for instance our theme for February was Children Education month. We divided groups beforehand to organize who will be in charge of holding fundraisers each month. The proceeds from that fundraiser will be donated to an NGO that supports the cause of our monthly theme, for instance we donated to Anak Edukasih in February. Further mechanisms and details of our fundraisers are also discussed in the members’ meetings every Thursday after school.

Additionally, we also focus on social media awareness because we fully know the massive impact of social media nowadays. It starts with a group chat of all members where we share educational and informational posts about important matters, in which all the members are later encouraged to educate themselves and further spread awareness by sharing the posts in their Instagram story, a huge part of teenagers’ mode of communication. If the shared matter is an important issue that needs our help, then all members are required to sign a set petition which helps the particular issue. For example, there was a case of a murdered Asian teenager due to discriminatory motifs, and we helped by signing a petition that was set up by their lawyer to show the amount of support and solidarity in proving that it was indeed a hate crime that needs justice. Additionally, we have created a social platform to share further information about our club, which is @sc_activision on Instagram, as well as a website that contains complete information on each of our monthly themes and actions, fundraiser resources, educational resources, and petitions you can sign.

Overall, we’re satisfied with our current progress, having donated a fair amount of money to Anak Edukasih (February/Education) and Rumah Zakat (March/Covid-19 aid). We aim to continue developing and expanding our capability in raising awareness and involvement, as well as reaching a larger audience too.