Anomali and US Embassy has always shared a progressively supportive relationship, but not until they offered a $ 10.000 for anomali to convene an English Speaking competition called Youth Speak Fun Day.

The idea of the Youth Speak Fun Day event was initially started by the Jakarta Post, a reknowned english language newspaper circulating in Indonesia. The US Embassy decided that they are going to take part in sponsoring the event, by giving the grant to Anomali.

After recovering from excitement, Anomali staffs discussed thoroughly regarding the allocation of the funds and decided to convene the Fun Day not only in English Debate Tournament but also Spelling Bee Competition. This is made under the consideration that Youth Speak Fun Day is made under the reason to create an event in which Indonesian Youth can speak English no matter what, thus Anomali considers that it would be appropriate to convene more than a debate tournament, even tough making a Spelling Bee competition was not inside our comfort zone.

Youth Speak Fun day was conceived as a one day event by the funding partners, however, Anomali decided to extend the event into three days due to the nature of debate tournament that requires preliminary rounds. Due to Anomali’s level of involvement, we were able to convince the stakeholders to extend the tourndament days into three days instead of one day, eventough we were initially proposing for five days.

The Youth Speak Fun Day was initially made only to cover schools in Greater Jakarta only, however since Anomali was convening the event, we managed to negotiate our partner schools from Bandung and Malang to be able to participate in the event as well, specificaly for the debate competition.

The registration for all the competitions under Anomali are free of charge, all participantes were invitation based. We had 24 teams for the debate competition and 54 individuals for Spelling Bee.

The first two days of the competition took place in Binus High International School in Simprug, Jakarta. All the participants, especially the ones that come from outside Jakarta were very impressed with the school’s facility, security and cleanliness. We would also like to point out the schools has an amazing view of Jakarta City Lights in the evening.

From Anomali, Mr. Erry Deodate assisted by Ms. Ria Kurniati acted as Chief Adjudicator and Deputy Chief Adjudicator for the debate tournament. To ensure the quality of the debate rounds,both of them have invited from universities across Jakarta, Bandung and beyond. These invited adjudicators are debaters with significant debating experience and have also adjudicating in numerous regional, national and international debating tournaments.

Mr. Erry have also insured the quality of the tournament by providing tough motions to be debated upon.

Preliminary Round 1 : US Foreign Policy

1. This House Would Use More Carrots Than Stick When It Comes To Iran

2. This House Believes That 2009 Troop Surge to Afghanistan Is A Bad Idea

3. This House Would Lift Embargo On Cuba

Preliminary Round 2 : Health

1. This House Would Tax Overweight People

2. This House Would Not Allow Advertisement to Enhance It’s Models

3. This House Would Move To Opt Out System Of Organ Donation

Preliminary Round 3 : Legas System

1. This House Believes That Parents Should Also Be Held Responsible For The Crimes Of Their Children

2. This House Would Give Harsher Punishment For Environmental Offenders

3. This House Would Not Allow Close Door Trial

Quarter Final Round : Media/ Journalism

1. This House Would Allow Citizen Journalism

2. This House Believes That Destroying Media Facilities During Battle is Justifiable

Semi Final Round : US Domestic Policy

1. This House Believes That Senate Should Abandon The Practice Of Filibustering

2. This House Believes That Merit Based Pay For Teachers Brings More Harm Than Good

The Grand final for the Youth Speak Fun Day english debate competition is held at International Sport Center Indonesia in Ciputat. The motion used in the final round is “THBT student athletes should have different academic performance standards” which was taken from the Education topic. The finalists were SMAK 3 Jakarta versus SMAN 3 Bandung, where SMAK 3 poses as the Propposition and SMAN 3 as the Opposition. The winner of the debate was SMAK 3 with a split decision between the adjudicators (3-2).

From the debate competition, we have received positive comments and feedbacks from all the participants, sponsors and even the volunteers. Almost all of them expects the same competition to be held again next year. We personally hope it can be an anual event, but it is still up to the US Embassy and Jakarta Post as the main sponsors to decide.

A little to the side note, Anomali also held a fund debate round within the debate competition just for the heck of it. The Motion was “This House would put a Bio-Hazard sign on Indomie package”. The debate turned out to be a fun and hilarious debate, in which most of the people involved still remember until this day.

We have also welcomed a “surprise visitor” from the teachers from Lamongan, coming to the event specifically just to see the debate. Since they came quite late and the debates are already in progress, we decided to hold a special round just for them. The teachers enjoyed the surprise treatment, the debaters enjoyed having been able to perform again, and we enjoyed to get the feeling that we are able to be flexible in hosting these unexpected events.

Aside from the debate, Anomali also host a Spelling Bee competition for highschools in greater Jakarta.

Overall Anomali would like to congratulate the winners, and also the volunteers for a job well done. But specifically thank you for The Jakarta Post and The US Embassy for sponsoring such a magnificent event.

A view of the Mayor's Office in Malang Municipality

Maintaining the ecosystem balance and environmental preservation through societal involvement in Malang has always been the intention of Anomali’s Urban Environmental Watch Program. Through a series of small and creative grass-root actions; such as the Bird Watching Program, Tree Caring Program and Beach Clean Act, Anomali is actually aiming to shape Malang Municipality to become a city with sustainable environmental awareness and actions, or in more widely known as an Eco City.

Mr. Amol Titus, Reggy's Mentor

Due to the gravity of urgency and feasibility, British Council have decided to support the Project, envisioned by Reggy Hasibuan as one of British Counncil’s Climate Champion. As a Climate Champion, it is Reggy’s passion to bring solution to the mitigation of Climate Change issues to grass-root level, even into an area as scoped down as Malang Municipality. British Council has also provided Reggy with a mentor to help him realise his vision into reality through a series of environmental managerial skills. The CEO of WISE Indonesia, Mr. Amol Titus, has agreed to become Reggy’s mentor and personally assist him to shape Malang as the first Eco City in Indonesia.

For Wise Indonesia website please refer to: www.indonesiawise.com

Oriental White Eye, one of the most hunted bird in Malang

Malang is chosen due to the unique nature that it has. Aside from the averagely small size for a municipality, Malang is also known as a student city with a multitude of Highschools and Universities in close proximity, making them as strategic sources for volunteer recruitment. The city currently also has 9 City Forest and 21 City Parks, eventough the enclosure of the total of open green areas have yet to achieve 30% of the city’s area. The current open green areas, hilly contour added with the river Brantas, which is the biggest river is East Java, has made Malang into a city with spectacular bird population and species, and most of them live inside the city. To Anomali, the birds are the indicator of clean air and ecosystem balance, reflecting the environmental policy of the city and thus, worth to be closely monitored. However, rapid economic problems have become the factor that contributes to the diminishing open green areas as they are converted as comercial areas, increasing shanty areas, and increasing difficulties in acquiring fresh water, fluent electricity and piling house hold waste.

In November 18th 2009, British Council supported Reggy’s Eco City project by conducting a workshop to disseminate the information regarding Malang to spread awareness and support to invited participants from city planning experts, environmentalists, business leaders, media groups and governmental agencies. As the result of of the workshop, a set of instruction, guidelines and advises were composed to further assist the shaping of Malang Municipality as an Eco City.

For press releases regarding the workshop please refer to:

English:http://www.unleashingideas.org/blog/$blog/2009/11/18/jakarta_opens_gew_with_pecha_kucha_night?_c=1

Indonesian:http://sains.kompas.com/read/xml/2009/11/19/07562224/reggy.dan.keinginannya.mewujudkan.malang.eco.city

Indonesian: http://www.britishcouncil.org/id/indonesia-gew-eco-cities.htm

Due to the level of existing awareness, capacity and support, Anomali sees Malang Municipality as the city that would offer more opportunities rather than challenges to be shaped up as an Eco City and we are looking forward for the support, suggestions and critics of everyone who are reading this blog.

The Welcoming Screen inside the Debaters Hall

Since its establishment in 2003, Phyxius Debate Association has become the most influential English Debate Society in West Java and even National scale in terms of activity and identity. Just recently they held the 4th Phyxius English Debate Championship, participated by schools from Jakarta and Bandung. For this special occasion, Anomali also assisted St. Albert school from Malang to participate in this competition, regardless of distance constraint. Our aim is for our new partner school in Malang to witness the debating experience in national scale and also to learn from Phyxius as a full-fledged and established English Debate Club.

The event turned out to be a massive blast for everyone who were participating. From Anomali side, we were glad to see our other partner schools from Bandung and Jakarta there. From our kids from Malang, they were surprised and astonished by the quality and the enjoyment of the tournament. Anomali would like to congratulate the committee for being able to create a platfrom of debate competition not just as an academical challenge, but also as a youthful and entertaining event. We think that the strategy used to introduce motions entertainingly and the strategy used to build tension and competitiveness amongst participants are good learning opportunities for other schools. More importantly Anomali would also like to congratulate PDA for being able to stay succesfuly independent and self-maintained for the past seven years as an English Debate Club. We are proud to have assisted you all steps of the way.

The Yet To Be Glorious Malang's St. Albert Team.

Our heartfelt congratulations also goes for the teams who managed to secure high-ranking positions in the competition, which just happened to be schools under Anomali’s partnership. We would like to congratulate SMAN 81 Jakarta as the champion, and of course Ruth as our favorite speaker (we have a good picture of her actually wearing a skirt!), also for Canisius College as the runner up. Good job for their coaches, especially Mr. Erry from Anomali as Canisius College’s coach. Malang’s St. Albert managed to secure the position as the octo-finalist, in which we deemed not bad as their first debate competition experience. Overall, the days of PEDC are really good days for us.

Teacher from East Kalimantan poses in front of the Training's banner.

Anomali under the support from The Minisitry of Environment, British Council and Hans Seidel Foundation, has facilitated “Youth Debate and on Negotiation Skills on Climate Change” in Hyatt Hotel, Sanur, Bali 14-15 October 2009. The training was followed by 25 selected students from 15 junior high schools and high schools across Bali and Jakarta.

Mr. Reggy Hasibuan, the chairperson of Anomali was requested specifically to act as a facilitator in this event. This training was held as a side event to the Conference on

Reggy and the Training's Participant

Article 6 to UNFCCC which is regarding Education, Training and Public Awareness. The participants of the training were given the chance later on to join in the conference to provide their insight as young people from Indonesia, and also as a chance to implement the debate and negotiation skills.

Mr. Ibnu Najib and Mr. Wilson Ang, who are other British Council’s Climate Champions participating in the Conference as Moderators, also stopped by the Training to provide motivations to the student participants.

In the end, the training received warm and enthusiastic reception from all the student participants, the Ministry of Environment and also from the International Delegations in Article 6 Conference.

Students from Junior Highschool in Bali Casebuilding

Wika, Reggy and April, the only delegate from East Java managed to enter Final Round

Aaaaand… we made it!! Ms. Wika and Ms. April who were under the assistance of Anomali managed to get the 2nd runner up in National University English Debate Championship (NUEDC). Being the best 3 from 92 teams national wide, they’re also ensured by DIKTI to be sent to Turkey to compete in Worlds.

It was a roller coaster ride for the team, having experienced a difficult time in the 5 preliminary rounds, in which they earned the total score of 11 from the maximum of 15. Their performance in the preliminary round positioned them in rank 7 from the total of 32 teams that managed to break into octo-finals. The team performance in the final rounds, however, were better and they even managed to reach rank 1 in semi-final. In the final round, they faced ITB, UI and Atma Jaya, and secured the third place. In the end, Bandung Institute of Technology got rank 1, followed by Universitas Indonesia, Malang State University and Atma Jaya Jakarta.

We are also happy that another team that we assisted, the team from Malang Muhammadiyah University (UMM), also managed to break into octofinal and secured rank 16 from the overall 92 teams. Good job Ms. Diah and Ms. Mia, you girls made us proud.

Anomali would like to congratulate all the finalists, which all will be sent to Turkey as well. For detailed information regarding the tournament, please visit http://nuedc2009.johnrendy.com/team.php

But what happened to the juniors?

The delegate sent to PIMNAS was not able to achieve significant achievement in the event, and even they turned against each other. Anomali is still in the process of reconciling the team members. Meanwhile, the rest of the juniors were sent to Java Overland Debate Championship (JOVED), in which they managed to win three rounds from the overall six preliminary rounds. Even tough it was not enough for them to break into final rounds, they enjoyed the competition and we feel that they have given their best in the competition. Anomali is certain that in the next tournament they will be better, and in due time they will no longer be over-shadowed by their seniors.

We realized its not always popsicles and rainbows in our assistance in debating, but the path to become true champion is meant not to be easy, as it should be. But we will enjoy leaping one sharp rocks to another until more Indonesian youth are empowered.

So, what happen to all Anomali officers that have left the main HQ to seek job elsewhere? Apparently, much to our delight, they are still consistent in coaching debate, wherever they are. This time, Anomali would like to salute four of our senior coaches who are away and spreading the awareness. We would also like to pay tribute to our emerging junior coaches that were once our students.

Mr. Aribawa Pratama Assidiq aka Coach Bowo, who are infamously known for his uncanny method in coaching debate, has long left Anomali in Malang to pursue his fortune in Balikpapan, East Borneo. Even tough he is busy with his new work in Balikpapan, Mr. Aribawa took an initiative to approach one of the public school in the city to coach debate in his free time. From this initiative, Coach Bowo has been coaching in Balikpapan for two years and counting. Due to the scarce opportunity of Parliamentary English Debate Competitions in Balikpapan, Coach Bowo decided to bring his kids to Jakarta to participate in All Law Students Association (ALSA) Debate Championship, a decision which was supported by the Balikpapan government in form of airfare tickets. The students managed to get the 2nd runner up place in the first performance in Parliamentary Debate, in one of the toughest competition there is in national scale. After that, the achievements just pouring in, and making Balikpapan Public School I in the map of one of the best school in Debating in Indonesia.

We would also like to congratulate Coach Bowo and his students of breaking into the Octo-Final round in Indonesian High School Debate Championship. Congratulations Safira, Ruth and Elza from all of our staffs.

Mr. Arie Sinardi aka Coach Widey has long been busy with his work in Jakarta, yet however, he still managed to go back and forth to Bandung to Coach the students in Indonesian Education University (UPI). Under his tutorship, UPI debaters have experienced a significant boost in their skills as proven by attaining the 1st Runner Up in National University English Debate Championship (NUEDC) region B1.

Ms. Andriani Pipit aka Coach Pip recently was the coach of Valiant Debate Club from Malang State University. She has maintained the high quality of debate in the university, mostly on her own expenses. When, Valiant debaters managed to reach the 2nd runner up in the Indonesian Inter-Varsity Debate Championship it was mostly the result of her handy work. She has recently moved to the Netherlands for some internship work there, and still plotting to coach debate the students in some high schools there.

Mr. Rizal Kuddah aka Coach Rizal is the only extension Anomali has in East Java region outside Malang Municipality. Not only that, but Coach Rizal is the only coach that manages to teach English Debate proficiency to the Indonesian Naval Academy sustainably. Under his tutorship, the Academy has been able to exist in Indonesian Debating world alongside other prestigious educational institutions. Moreover, Mr. Rizal also coaches the Public Highschools in Sidoarjo district area and sending their students to represents East Java in National Competitions. Thanks to coach Rizal, the Sidoarjo Public Schools have become prominent figures in East Java debating community.

We would also like to congratulate our junior coach, Coach Haris and Coach Asa. They were once students from Malang Public School IV under our tutorship, but now they have graduated and become the tutor themselves. It didnt take them long to prove their coaching abilities, since not long after, the debater from their school managed to won an all East Java Debate Competition held by Airlangga University in Surabaya. More importantly, CODE from Malang Public School IV has become a self-sustaining debate club.

The Team Members in Final Round Venue

In January Anomali has again produced a record in its achievement by attaining two national scale achievements in the same month. We assisted Malang State University debate team in attaining the 2^nd runner up place in Indonesian Varsities English Debate Championship and sent Mr. Reggy Hasibuan to compete in the Next Leaders TV show in which he managed to reach to the 2^nd place.

The Indonesian Varsity English Debate Championship is the largest scale National Debate Tournament held by Jogjakarta Muhammadiyah University and followed by 60 teams from all across Indonesia. Coaches from Anomali assisted the team from Malang State University to represent the University and Town to the National Tournament. With a 4-1 standing (4 wins-1 lost) in preliminary rounds, the team managed to get into rank 6 from all the 60 competitors and finally attained the 2^nd runner up place after winning the octo final and quarter final. Anomali would like to congratulate the members of the team;

• Ms. Nila Silviana,
• Ms. Rizqi Zhairisma and
• Ms. Roza Puspita

They have fought tooth and nail to maintain the prestigious achievement. Anomali would also like to congratulate Team UGM B and team UGM A from Gajah Mada University Jogjakarta as the Champion and 1^st runner up of the competition. All in all it was a good game.

Not long after IVED, Mr. Reggy Hasibuan was selected as the finalist of the Next Leaders TV Show organized by Leads Institute in cooperation with Metro TV. Mr. Reggy has to follow 2 days of leadership training with 13 other finalists prior to the competition. The training was facilitated by prestigious speakers including

• Mr. Bima Arya from Leads Institute,
• the politician Mr. Budiman Sudjatmiko, and
• the philosopher Mr. Komaruddin from Jakarta State University.

The competition was broadcasted in Metro TV studio, hosted by Ms. Fifi Aleyda Yahya and brought forward undergraduate students from universities across Jakarta as live spectators. The finalists were judged by the judges whom comprised of the political analyst Mr. Bima Arya, psychologist Mrs. Dini Puspita and politician Mr. Ray Rangkuti, and also the spectators. The phases of the competition were set into three subsequent stages.

• The first stage is a Q & A session with the judges to choose the best 6 in which each finalist was given 90 seconds to answer the questions.
• The second stage is aimed to trim the best 6 to the best 3 in which the remaining finalists were given the chance to perform public oration from the given topics and after that they were separated into two teams of three people to perform two debate rounds. The first motion was regarding MUI’s fatwa to criminalize non voters and the second one is regarding multi-parties system in the country.
• In the last stage, the remaining finalists were again had to answer questions from the judges and perform in a debate against each other with the motion of Sukarno and Hatta as the best leadership style for Indonesia now.

In his oration and debate performances, Mr. Reggy often brought forward the environmental issues and current Anomali environmental projects, bringing the issue closer to the audience and help spreading awareness. In the end Mr. Reggy managed to achieve the 2^nd place and awarded a notebook and a scholarship, in which he turned down to be given to other finalist from Maluku who he deemed needs it more than him.

Anomali would like to congratulate all finalists for their superb performances and especially the last standing three finalists which were Mr. Hariqo Wibawa Satria from Jogjakarta, Mr. Reggy Hasibuan from Malang and the champion Mr. Agung Baskoro from Jogjakarta.

The show is incorporated under Metro TV’s show the Candidate and will be aired in approximately 19 February. For further information regarding the participants please visit here.

Facebook, Google, YouTube, MTV, Howcast, Columbia Law School, the U.S. Department of State and Access 360 Media are bringing leaders of 17 pioneering organizations from 15 countries together with technology experts next month in New York for the first-ever conclave to empower youth against violence and oppression through the use of the latest online tools in The Alliance of Youth Movement Summit.

Anomali is invited by the US Department of States via the Indonesian US Embassy to participate in the summit to represent Indonesia. We sent Mr. Reggy Hasibuan to represent Anomali Inter-faith Dialogue as an observer in the Summit, along with 8 other organizations.

The young leaders will form a new group, the Alliance of Youth Movements, which will produce a field manual for youth empowerment. The field manual will stand in stark contrast to the Al-Qaeda manual on the basics of terrorism, found by Coalition Forces in Iraq.

The gathering was inspired by the success of the One Million Voices Against the FARC, a group started on Facebook.com by young people in Colombia. Aided by social networking technologies, the organization inspired 12 million people in 190 cities around the world to take to the streets in protest against the FARC, an extremist group that has been terrorizing Colombia for more than 40 years. The magnitude of the marches illustrated once and for all that the FARC lacked a strong support base. Within days of the protests, the FARC witnessed massive desertions from their ranks. The Colombian group will share their ideas with leaders of other groups that use social and mobile technologies to promote freedom and justice and oppose violence, extremism and oppression.

Speakers at the Summit include:

• Whoopi Goldberg, Host of ABC’s “The View”
• Dustin Moskovitz, Co-Founder, Facebook
• James K. Glassman, Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, U.S. Department of State
• Oscar Morales, Founder, One Million Voices Against the FARC
• Luke Russert, MSNBC
• Matthew Waxman, Associate Professor of Law, Columbia Law School

Summit participants are also be honored at a red-carpet event with entertainment celebrities, business leaders, and civil society figures at the former home of MTV’s Total Request Live (“TRL”) overlooking Times Square.

From this opportunity, Anomali manages to secure links from many influential organizations, attains new knowledge regarding peaceful rallies and anti-violence movements, and also accomplishes a sustainable relationship with US Department of States.

Anomali Youth Empowerment Center has successfully assisted the Indonesian US Embassy in convening the first ever US Election themed Debate in Indonesia. The event will be free of charge and to be conducted in four provinces in Indonesia which are West Java, Jogjakarta, East Java and South Sulawesi from October 24^th 2008-October 31^st 2008.

Hundreds of students from prestigious universities across Indonesia participated in this event along with some national and international level experts and notables. As the result Indonesian students have known better regarding the issues pertaining US policies from both the candidates’ perspective.

Testimonials from many participants stated that due from the tournament; they now understand American politics better than Indonesian politics.

We would like to thank the American Corner staffs for their cooperation in organizing the event. We would also like to thank the regional Tournament Directors for their great work. They are Mr. Mafatih Fadhly from Muhammadiyah University Malang, Ms. Maria Aleida from UGM Jogjakarta, and Ms. Fenica from Parahyangan University Bandung.

We would also like to thank you Mrs. Michelle Cenzer and Mr. Jason P. Rebholz from the US Embassy for the opportunity. This event is a landmark of Anomali’s sustainable cooperation with the US Embassy.

For more information and pictures of the competition please check our facebook group.

In June 26^th 2008, Anomali took part to facilitate a workshop session in International Youth Forum in Bandung, West Java, Indonesia. The theme of the workshop was “Youth Participation in the Millennium Development Goal”. Mr. Reggy Hasibuan represented Anomali together with Mr. Ibnu Najib and Ms. Eni Hidayati from Asian Youth Leaders Climate Forum. The participants in the session were 30 young people from Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Cambodia, Suriname, Sudan and Cameroon, each with their own expertise in MDG elements.

The participants responded well to Anomali presentation regarding small-scale solution to Climate Change in Malang Municipality, and admitted that the story inspired them to react accordingly in relevance to MDG. Even after lunch, Mr. Reggy showed the participants how to separate the rubbish from lunch box, organic waste, plastic waste and plastic cups. This action has shown the participants that steps to response to Climate Change an Global Warming can be done anytime, anywhere easily.

Anomali also facilitated the participants to create actions plans in accordance to their expertise and to create an individual commitment for further involvement in the MDG. Anomali is now a part of the MD International Youth Network as the result of the successful workshop.