We all like to hear a good story and Bacarita dari Timur (Tales from the East), the brainchild of Iwan Muskitta (Basudara Maluku, Global), Jeff Malaihollo (Bahasa Basudara) and Jeff’s friends from Dayalima - a holding company in Jakarta, Indonesia - Rozan Anwar (President Director and Co-founder), Meike Malaon (Commissioner and Chairperson) and Endah Affif (Co-founder), has been a great success. Their idea was to introduce Moluccan speakers from around the globe, who would tell their success story via a virtual platform like Zoom, to a wider audience. Interestingly most of the audience were from Indonesia.

DayaLima had always been keen to help the people in the eastern part of his Indonesia and over the years both Rozan and Meike, who were Jeff's school friends, have had many conversations on sharing their knowledge and particularly leadership skills with people in Maluku. So, when they heard about Bahasa Basudara, they were very keen to get involved and wanted to help.

Rozan also thought that you could do more. “Teaching only wouldn’t change a person’s mindset or values. You also need to be able to influence and motivate people in other ways. DayaLima had the capability to organise TED-style webinars, so together with the Bahasa Basudara Team, we hopped into the gap and started inviting Moluccan people who had an affinity or had links with Maluku,” he said.

Dayalima aims to generate leaders whose mission is to advance humanity through fresh ideas, forefront skills, and compassion for future generations.
 
Unlike the well-known TED Talks that started in 1987 and only covered short talks (maximum 20 minutes) about Technology, Entertainment and Design in the English language, our own Bacarita dari Timur webinar series lasted nearly two hours. They were also conducted in English and Indonesian - deftly moderated and translated by Iwan Muskitta - and covered a variety of subjects.

The whole team at DayaLima threw their support behind Bacarita dari Timur and the webinars were run professionally. At the end of each webinar, DayaLima put together a fun quiz, to test whether the audience had paid attention to the speaker’s story.

The webinar with Natasia Malaihollo has led to several workshops and the establishment of a Moluccan entrepreneur Fund, whilst there are ongoing talks with Rocky Hehakaija to set up a Favela Street Project in Maluku.

If you haven’t seen any of our webinars yet, then you can still go to our YouTube channel or the Bahasa Basudara blog page where you can find a summary of these inspiring and educational talks. We will start the next series in 2021.