Review For My Statement Of Purpose on Sustainable Tourism Development

[andriseptiaan]

During my studies, I have found that my main interest is in ethics and philosophy of economic related to social development issue. Therefore, for my thesis, I conducted a further research on finding sufficient ethical judgment for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Program. From my research, I laid the foundation for building an ethic-economic concept of CSR. My research is then published in a national journal, The Journal of the University of Indonesia.

Apart from my academic activities, in 2014, I had my first CSR project with the company I made together with my friends, an adventure and ecotourism trip organizer company. On my responsibility as a head of business development, I was assigned to lead a community empowerment program on education in 3 rural areas in Java Island. The project was a socio-traveler program which allows our clients to have vacation while taking social action on education for residents near tourist attractions. It was derived from the 2014 National Socio-Economic Survey showing that almost one in five children who complete the junior level does not continue into the final years of their education, and mostly because children in the rural area are unaware with what they will become in the future. On our first project, we provide the opportunity to 50 students from each mentioned rural areas as a representative to get training on future career development. Currently, the project has reached until the eastern part of Indonesia, Papua Island, and continue growing to reach any other rural areas. I would say that this project brought me facing the real issues in many rural areas in Indonesia, and at the same time brought me to another specific rural issue about youth unemployment in an undeveloped tourist area.

I have always believed that community empowerment is a key to answer various problems in Indonesia. I have seen many policies and programs are neglecting community empowerment. Leaving communities into huge dependency to external assistance that is not only unable to solving problems but creating more of it. Therefore, as part of the young generation, I believe that young people are playing role as an agent of change. However, in relation to development issue, young people are at the top of unemployment rate. In Indonesia, according to The National Labor Force survey, 16,8% among young people age 15 – 24 are unemployed. Therefore, young people are the key to community empowerment program. Youth should be informed, empowered, and involve in all level of activities, including policy-making and programming processes. They should have access to information, service, and commodities that should be comprehensive and accommodating their rights as a human being.

From those beliefs, in 2015, I and other several activists of Guide Alliance in Indonesia created a community-based tourism project in 3 rural areas of Indonesia, namely Pandeglang, Garut, and Malang. We trained youth to be a local guide then linking them to our market. Currently, I and a group of local guide in Malang are managing an isolated village but potential to develop an adventure tourism such as rafting, river tubing, also apple picking. Indonesia is facing a new style of traveling where outdoor activities become famous among citizen. Recently, they prefer going to nature after their hectic life in the city. This is a trend that is expected to continue in the future.

However, here remain many challenges. We lack of strategy in adopting an effective way to maintain a longterm tourism, contribute to sustainable growth, and increase employment throughout the village. This situation is very much different in Sweden which has been well on track to meet sustainability goal.

Hence, passion to serve my nation is my reason to apply Master of Sustainable Tourism Development in Uppsala University. I believe this program will give me deeper understanding in performing theoretical, strategic and practical work, including all the challenges visitor-intensive regions across the world will be facing in the future, that will be beneficial for my further career path as entrepreneur and researcher, as well as my social work. I see the needs for a tourism developer in my country who have deep understanding and passion to sustainable aspect in tourism as well as familiar with issues relating to sustainable regional and destination development from many different perspectives for encompassing supervision, community planning, education, research, communication, management of natural resources or decision-making. This programme is also an opportunity to prepare for research and doctoral studies. For a long-term purpose, I wish to serve a tourism university in Indonesia, as lecturer and researcher.

In conclusion, I consider myself as promising young Indonesian entrepreneur as well as local tourism developer and community worker. I sincerely hope that my qualifications, educational, organizational and working experiences would make an excellent contribution to my application.  I thank you for your consideration, and I am looking forward to your reply