About Me

Safrin La Batu is a final year undergraduate student of Universitas Hasanuddin Makassar majoring English Literature. Since his first year in university he has been affiliated with several organizations both intra and extra campus. Joining Islamic student organizations is part of his interests. He used to be a member of Himpunan Mahasiswa Islam (HMI); Islamic Student Association, Lembaga Dakwah Kampus (LDK); Student Islamic Mission and president of UKM LDM Al Adaab FIB Unhas; Student Islamic Mission faculty level. He believes that Islam brings peace message to all humankind regardless their cultures and religions and therefore it should be well understood and actualized in accordance to the present time context. Beside being a student activist, Safrin is also a young entrepreneur. He has run a small home-industry scaled business since his second year of High School. He is very much concerned to entrepreneurship that he believe if todays Indonesian gevernment encourage youth to be entrepreneurs, future generations will enjoy prosperity, unemployment would be vanished, and it is not impossible Indonesian government would import workers from other countries.

In 2010, Safrin joined cultural exchanges with some Japanese students and involved in social empowering and voluntary activities. He worked in an NGO and help socializing the use of environmently-friendly fishing to people living in coastal areas. Since then, Safrin is committed to dedicate himself to some NGOs to work as volunteer. Safrin is now working as a volunteer in several NGOs. He is working for Perhimpunan Tuna Netra Indonesia (PERTUNI); The Association of Indonesian Blind, helping to advocate the rights of Indonesian blind to the local government. He is also working voluntarily for Yayasan Samudera Indonesia (YASINDO) as a teacher. He teaches street children and help the government stopping them from bumming money from road users. These activities has forged him to be serious in voluntary projects that he aspire to establish an NGO aiming for lower class society, strengthening their economy and to help eradicating poverty in Indonesia as his motto ‘Envisioning a BETTER Indonesia’.

After his participation in a program called ‘ Study of the United States Institutes (SUSI) for Student Leaders’ funded by US State Department in which for five weeks he studied Religious Pluralism and Democracy in Temple University, Philadelphia, he returns home with new interest and ideas as well as commitment to coin a tolerant and open-minded society that he and his SUSI RPA peers  are now establishing an NGO called Rumah Dialog; a House for Dialogue. This organization is aimed to promote issues of tolerance, respect, and knowledge regarding democracy and human rights.