Shaping the future

“CSR is important because Indosat cannot grow on its own, it has to grow together with the country,” explains Johnny Swandi Sjam, President Director of Indosat, outlining his company’s dedication to providing a helping hand to Indonesia’s communities through the technological advancement of the country. “Our strategy in CSR since 2005 has been to focus on education, because we see this as the most important basic requirement for our generation to realise a better future. We are now focusing on three components of Indonesian education: the students, the teachers and the infrastructure.

“We have two primary schools in Aceh. We award scholarships to ITN engineering students. We hold a competition, the Indosat wireless innovation contest, which is an inspirational event for the young generations in Indonesia. The competition provides them with the opportunity to express themselves. Last year’s winner is from a small city in East Java. He’s only just finished school but he has developed something we would probably never have thought of. Now he’s become a part of the Indosat think-tank and he’ll be working with our project team to develop our products and deliver them to our customers, the Indonesian communities. That is our objective, to support and participate in the development of technology in Indonesia.”

As well as developing grass roots education programmes, Indosat has been on hand to provide logistical and humanitarian support in the wake of the 2005 Tsunami, and recent earthquakes in Yogyakarta and Central Java.