[Unpad.ac.id, 1/09/2016] Lecturer of the Faculty of Medicine, Universitas Padjadjaran, dr. Dani Ferdian won the ASEAN Youth Award, an award of ASEAN for the best youth at the ASEAN level. He won the award in the series of Senior Official Meeting on the implementation of the Youth for-8 in Siem Reap, Cambodia, 25-26 August 2016.
The award was achieved by dr. Dani in relation to his work on various youth activities, one of which is through the Volunteer Doctors movement he initiated. Volunteer Doctors is a social movement of youth engaged in social, humanitarian, and health. This movement was founded in 2009, at which time dr. Dani was a student at the faculty level 2.
“In addition to the benefit to the community, the purpose of the movement is to build character, especially the candidates for health personnel in terms of empathy, social sensitivity, and volunteering passion,” said dr. Dani.
Starting from the activities carried out in West Java, this movement has now developed into a number of areas such as Jakarta, Yogyakarta and South Sulawesi. In fact, after the Volunteer Doctors was introduced to the ASEAN level, some countries were interested to duplicate this activity.
Until now, Volunteer Doctors have been moving more than 1,000 youth, who not only come from the fields of medicine, but also from other fields in the field of health and non-health. In addition to students, this activity also involves a number of professionals from various fields.
“So this is a collaboration among all fields since the purposes were to benefit the public in accordance with what the people need, and also prepare the professionals candidates who will come to be more humane with various activities that we do. That is the reason we collaborate between professional and non-professional, and we did not collaborate in the field of medicine only because in any social activities yes medical doctors can not do it alone, so it took a collaboration, “said dr. Dani.
In this movement, there are a lot of activities undertaken related to the benefit of society and the character development of youth, such as medical assistance, health screening, health education, coaching street children, blood donation, research, disaster response, social visits, seminar/talk shows, community empowerment, and others.
Besides Volunteer Doctors, dr. Dani was active in many other youth activities, such as mentoring and coaching various student organizations, as well as participate in the development community and a variety of other social movements in various regions in Indonesia.
Before elected as representatives of Indonesia at the ASEAN level, dr. Dani was one of the award-winning Best Achievement Youth Pioneer National level of the Minister of Youth and Sports Affairs in 2015 for Social Affairs, Culture, Tourism, and State Defense. Overall, there are five candidates who won the award for the 5 fields.
“Of the five, then the Ministry conducted another selection to choose one person as the best youth. One person was selected to be sent to ASEAN level award,” said the man born in Bandung on April 5, 1989.
With the election he became an award winner at the ASEAN level, dr. Dani was determined to further improve the quality of his youth movement for the benefit of society. He himself said that the award is not a goal to be achieved. Various youth activities he did the passion that he run in order to provide benefits to the community and the youth.
“This is beyond belief and not my goal. But to achieve an award like this, our responsibility becomes greater as we had better, in terms of the quality of movement, as well as to give birth to similar movements in other provinces and even ASEAN. Usefulness must be felt up at the ASEAN level,” said dr. Dani.
In addition to these awards, there are a number of other awards dr. Dani have achieved in relation to the youth movement. Among others were Sabilulungan Award for Inspirational Youth of Regent Bandung (2016), The Indonesian Choice Award from PT. Astra International Tbk (2015), Inspiring Student Movement of Society Social Scientist and Technology Indonesia (2012), and Young Ashoka Ashoka Change Makers of Indonesia (2012).
Reported by Artanti Hendriyana / eh
