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Everyone is out to make mom proud, but few of us manage to become the envy of every mother on the block. The Indonesian Youth Conference may have ended over two months ago, but the ripple effect is still rolling throughout the archipelago, pushing teenagers to think about education and the environment. Today, Alanda Kariza, 19, an international business major and the brains behind July’s conference, talks about where she draws her fire from, ‘paying it forward’ and what it’s like to get a novel published at just 14 years old.

You haven’t always been one of Indonesia’s leading young environmentalist activists. How old were you when you published your first book, ‘Mint Chocolate Chips’?

I was 14. When I published my first novel it opened a lot of doors and afforded me opportunities to write in teen magazines and meet people from the media. Even though it wasn’t that good, people were impressed that I had written something at such a young age.

How did you get it published?

I wrote the book and my friends wanted to read it and people just kept copying the manuscript. Eventually it was distributed throughout the school because my friends kept copying it. I wasn’t scared because I wanted feedback. I had nothing to lose, right? So I sent the book off and they published it.

How did you get involved in volunteer work?

When I graduated from junior high school I wanted to work for international NGOs, but they wouldn’t accept me because I was 15. Some of the organizations have child protection policies, but I thought, ‘There must be a lot of young people who want to do this but don’t have the opportunity.’ So my friend and I tried to establish a community of young people who care about their surroundings. It was called The Cure for Tomorrow. We worked to empower young people through environmental and educational issues.

What kind of volunteering did you do?

At first we tried to do everything that we could. We tried to collect donations for the Yogyakarta earthquake in 2006, and we went to orphanages to share our knowledge and skills, but we decided that we had to focus on one thing. Because we were young and we had school, we couldn’t do everything at once, so we focused on environmental issues, especially waste issues. We had a clean up your neighborhood campaign and recycling workshops.

Who influenced you, who do you look up to?

I would say my mother; she’s not an activist, but my goal in life was to make her proud and somehow I found that this path is taking me there because I meet new people and achieve things I never thought I would achieve.

I was also inspired by the movie ‘Pay It Forward.’ I thought, if I can get three people to help save the environment or if I ask three people to stop wasting water or stop using plastics and three of them tell three of their friends, then the whole nation might be able to do something about climate change.

What would you have three people in Jakarta do to pay it forward?

I think you need to change mind-sets in Jakarta. People are skeptical, or maybe they only complain, you know complain about the government and the environment without doing anything about it. But after the mind-set changes then everyone will contribute to Indonesia.

When you first decided to implement change did you imagine that you would influence so many people?

It wasn’t about influencing people, it was more like ‘If I don’t do this, then who else will?’

What was the last project that you worked on?

The Cure for Tomorrow was disbanded in 2008, but two months later I was chosen as Indonesia’s representative at Global Changemakers. It’s a program run by the British Council and they send young people to the UK for capacity-building seminars. We had to go home and make a program in our home country so I organized the Indonesia Youth Conference. We have 62 million young people in Indonesia yet we don’t have an accessible platform for young people to speak from. The conference showed that we have bright young people willing to do great things for the country. On the last day, we had 400 people interacting and sharing ideas and information.

What positives came out of the conference?

We invited 33 activists from 33 provinces and we held capacity-building sessions so they would be able to do something in their home province. There are 33 projects going on throughout Indonesia on health, environment and education.

What do you do every day to practice what you preach?

I don’t use plastics and I try to use public transportation whenever I can.

What’s next for you?

Because of the Indonesian Youth Conference we are revamping The Cure for Tomorrow. We plan to hold another youth conference for next year. We are designing a new program where we visit high schools to give students scholarship, leadership and citizenship values.

How many volunteers will you need?

We’re planning on having 51 facilitators. We’re going to train 51 high school graduates who have track records in community activities. The program is going to be divided into three sessions: inspiration, where facilitators inspire participates; a sharing of personal stories, where we talk about what we’ve done and how we’ve done it; and the last one will be capacity building.