Why Sussex university is good for you

I was ironing my school uniform and ready to go to school when Indonesia’s second-deadliest earthquake struck Yogyakarta in 2006. I was only 14 years old. More than 5, 700 people die when a magnitude 6. 2 Richter scale quake hits my hometown. My mother told me to stay at home, but I insisted to go to school and wanted to know my classmates were alright. I lost two of my classmates, Dedi and Rud, it was heartbreaking. The situation in school was devastated, the teachers let us go home earlier. I managed to go home with my friends by the hands of a kindhearted taxi driver, he said “kids, there will be no bus, just hop in I will drop you all home”. I could not thank this gentleman enough. I arrived home safely, and I went to see my uncle directly, he was about to drive to the neighbouring villages to see the real-time situation with his Jeep Willys MB, I asked him to go with him and he let me, my mother did not know, she was not home yet. We went to the bridge nearby where the corpse of the earthquake victims was lying on the bridge. I could not handle it; I asked my uncle to drive back home. When I arrived home, my mother was prepared the emergency tent outside of the house with the neighbours, we slept outside because we still frightened by earthquake aftershocks that possibly beat us again. I cried to my mother and confessed to her that I was with my uncle to see the other villages, I saw a lot of dead bodies and I wanted to help the victims, my mother cried she did not allow me because I was only 14. 14 years old me have known that helping people in needs will always be part of my life, just like my late father, he died on an accident because he helped someone, which until now I do not know who he was trying to save. He helped people all his life, he was a policeman. The 2010’s Merapi’s eruption was the beginning of my humanitarian career, I volunteered and evacuated children to the shelter, I was 18 and I feel that help people make me happy. In 2013, I went to a remote island called Maratua island in East Kalimantan and spend three months serving the island community to be resilient and advocated sustainable tourism with 28 students from my former university, Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta. Recent years have cemented my interest in helping people. In March 2016, I landed my first full-time development job as a Communication & Advocacy Assistant in Save the Children. My undergraduate education has prepared me for my chosen career. The study, the earthquake, the eruption and the remote island life had prepared me to understand the essential feeling of communicating with any type of people in any situation, we have to feel like they feel, but their situation on our shoes. Any successful development program would of necessity take into account their very real belief in witchcraft. It applies to the government-to-government program too, where I am trying to synthesize the top-down way to be fair more bottom-up way in UNDP Indonesia as a Field Facilitator. The development practice should have not only benefitted the targeted project outcomes but also what is exactly the community needs and feel about all the project, are we helping them? Are we giving them enough chance to take a tiny bit of advantage from the project? Choose Masters of Development Studies at Sussex University will sharpen me in better theoretical and analytical thinking which is important to be a leader in the development sector.