Maverick Indonesia

Seriously accountable

It’s always gratifying to receive messages from Charles M. Ham, the Country Director of HOPE worldwide – Indonesia. HOPE operates in more than 100 countries, focusing on helping societies in the education and health sectors as well as children and social welfare.

Charles Ham has been proactively sending updates of HOPE’s activities in Indonesia.  Below is the latest message I received in my mailbox. Glad to know that HOPE is taking accountability issue seriously.

“Dear Friends & Donors of HOPE worldwide Indonesia,

Greeting from Jakarta!

We would like to share with you the March 12, 2007 report from Independent Auditor’s report on 2006 Financial Statements of HOPE worldwide Indonesia (locally registered as Yayasan Hope Indonesia) :

“In our opinion, the financial statements presented fairly in all material respect…………in conformity with generally accepted accounting principals (GAAP) in Indonesia”

As many of you may notice, There has been plenty of pressure among the media regarding accountability issue of NGOs in Indonesia. President of Indonesia request more regulation on NGOs for professionalism, The Global Fund for Aid Tuberculosis, and Malaria has frozen its funding for Indonesia since April 2007 after discrepancies reported by Pricewaterhouse Cooper, Oxfam scandal in Aceh, The World Bank’s Director scandal are just some of the coverage we have seen in the media lately.

Every year without failure, HOPE worldwide Indonesia is audited by independent auditor to keep up with our core values and beliefs, which is headed by Accountability. Charity Navigator , the international NGO watchdog for 6 years in a row since its formation has awarded  HOPE worldwide 4 star rating (highest one for exceptional) in fiscal management. Only 45 non profit organization are recipient of such honor, in which only 29 are NGos while 19 are top universities. (www.charitynavigator.org).

In 2005, Resource Alliance also recognized HOPE worldwide Indonesia as one of the NGOs in Asia Pacific that “have very good practices in the areas of resource mobilization and governance, accountability, transparency”.

With your support, we are able to continue services to the people of Indonesia holding on to these principals.

Thank you for your continuos support.”

Our first association with HOPE was for one of Citibank Peka’s community development programs called the Citigroup Success Fund (CSF). CSF disburses funds to high school teachers for developing creative and fun learning experiences for their students. The program has been running for four years in Jakarta, Bandung, Semarang and Surabaya.

In conjunction with the National Education Day on May 2, HOPE and Citigroup Indonesia will organize the 2006 CSF Winner Announcement - so fellow journalists please feel free to come.  More info about this event is available on the ‘Check This Out’ column in this blog.

Away to develop my bones

“The leadership instinct you are born with is the backbone. You develop the funny bone and the wishbone that go with it.” Elaine Agather

Early this month I was in Singapore to attend a leadership training at the INSEAD Campus.

It was a pleasant experience. The training facilitators, Dr. J. Stewart Black and Dr. Hal Gregersen were two of the most communicative, experienced and resourceful management coaches I have ever met. They have known each other for so long that they complement each other impeccably. Together, they wrote a management book titled Leading Strategic Change.

The program organizing was flawless. INSEAD employs only the most helpful staff. The campus is also supported with sufficient facilities: library, cafeteria, lots of desktop computers, and wi-fi enabled areas to name just a few. INSEAD also has its own adequately sized residence within the complex so that people traveling from overseas could stay there for a few days without having to worry about commuting.

There were lots of wonderful things about my three days training, but if I have to single out just one, it has got to be the shared experiences from all of the training participants. It has never ceased to amaze me how people from different industries experience almost similar obstacles and challenges in working life.

Talking about training participants, there were 29 people from 20 different countries in my class. I couldn’t believe that most of my new friends actually flew over across more than four time zones to undertake this course. I even made friends with people from Russia and Kazakhstan!

All in all I must say that INSEAD really lives by its motto to be “The Business School for the World”. The program fee is far from cheap, but it’s worth every single penny [of your company’s money ^_^]– and I’m so thankful that I was given the opportunity to do this. It only goes to show that the company is serious in terms of developing its people.

Here’s a group photo taken on the first day.

I swear on John Lennon’s ashes that I did not wander off and gone shopping on day two and three…

The Gypsy Night: Maverick’s 2007 Media Gathering

What’s a party without good companion?

Last Thursday, the Mavericks enjoyed the good companion of our journo friends in a Gypsy-themed party, held at Rumahlima, Jl. Iskandarsyah, Jakarta.

We normally meet up with our journo friends on our client’s events, and so this annual media gathering was conducted to know them better and subsequently deepen our relationship with them.

About 80 journos attending the gathering excitedly participated in the games.

Some of them also unleashed their undiscovered modeling talents in our Gypsy photo booth

While some others challenged their luck in tarot reading

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Our regular blog readers must have read about Maverick’s ‘click of the week’ where we choose one good quality journalist blog every week to be featured in our blog. On this occasion, we also announced Andreas Harsono’s blog as the 2007 Maverick Click of The Week.

“This is an iseng-iseng project,” commented Andreas, a previous The Jakarta Post journalist, about his blog. I’d say this is a pretty serious iseng-iseng because out of 11 other eminent journo blogs previously featured in our ‘click of the week’ Andreas blog really stands out.

Congratulations again, Andreas!

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By the end of the night, our journo friends had this to say about the event

“Maverick keren!! Sukses ye jeung, Cup ah” Ardian, Cakram
“Thx Maverick for the grand prize.”  Iwan Ungsi, Jawa Pos
“It’s good to meet old and new friends here.” Yos Mulya, Metro TV
“A night to remember.” Heri Eko Prasetyo, Rileks.com

It was indeed a night to remember for us.
Thanks again for coming. Hope you had fun as much as we did!