Zulkarnaen Siregar
IPMI International Business School
Amelia Naim Indrajaya
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The story provides insight into how Grab in Southeast Asia, including Indonesia, enriches the lives of their partners' or drivers' children by providing them free education workshops on how to become an entrepreneur through various activities and upholding the spirit of being entrepreneurs. The education given to them here activates and molds their entrepreneurial spirit for them to utilize and act on in their near future in today's modern world.
Each year, Grab holds workshops in various cities in Indonesia that include Bandung, Jakarta, Surabaya and Bali, while providing different types of curriculums that coincide with the purpose of molding the youths' entrepreneurial spirit. Together with YCAB Foundation, their partner in making this happen for them, Grab conducts workshops that include focusing on technology and entrepreneurship, the idea of merging technology and entrepreneurship, and followed by financial responsibility and business management skills workshops and their relationship to entrepreneurship.
Launched in 2015, GrabSchool is a regional program and one of many driver-centric initiatives that Grab has run through Southeast Asia. As of today, nearly 700 Grab drivers' children have participated in GrabSchool across Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam.
GrabSchool consists of a series of one-day workshops designed to empower children of Grab drivers and bikers to embrace entrepreneurship and shape their own future in today's world. As a company that provides online technology solutions for the society in Indonesia in terms of transportation solutions and also giving opportunity to their partners, their drivers, to help them in their cause, at the same time, through GrabSchool, Grab wishes to give the learning opportunity to their partners' children in finding and shaping their future.
As a company that has one of their primary missions to enrich the lives of their partners, we see that Grab has taken a step further of giving back to Indonesian society by enriching the lives of the partners' children by providing them the opportunity and expanding their horizon of how their lives can be in the near future when exposed to various entrepreneurial activities in GrabSchool, activating their entrepreneurial spirit and molding them through these activities. Through GrabSchool, Grab is also helping to shape the future of Indonesia by helping to shape the future of its children.
Many participants that joined this workshop had happy memories associated with it. One participant said that it helped him become more confident in becoming a good entrepreneur in the future by having deeper knowledge of entrepreneurship, creating a business, creating good products and ensuring their distribution to customers. Another participant also mentioned that he had more motivation and better understanding of how to run a business when he grows up.
Ridzki Kramadibrata, the Managing Director of Grab Indonesia, shared his thoughts on the activity on Grab's website, stating that “GrabSchool is our way to invest in the future of our drivers' and bikers' children's future. We believe that by providing them the opportunity to build confidence and teaching them the technical know-how, they can be successful entrepreneurs in the future.” At the same time, he also added that “Indonesia is eyeing to be the largest digital economy in Southeast Asia by 2020 by developing supportive startup ecosystem. GrabSchool helps achieve that goal by planting the seed of entrepreneurial spirit to children so that when their time comes, they are ready to set up business and utilize the digital technology to solve problems in the society while at the same time make profits.”
GrabSchool recently was held again back in March 2017 in the city of Bandung, West Java, after last year's success. As many as 100 Grab drivers' and bikers' children from ages 12 to 18 participated in the workshop, themed “Grab Your Chance: Designing Business, Designing Life,” where it introduced the idea of embracing entrepreneurship at an early age. This was an effort to boost their confidence level and show them that being a successful entrepreneur was a possible future for them. At the same time, the workshop also focused on the pros and cons of choosing a life as an entrepreneur and how a business can be built from scratch. In these activities, the participants were divided into ten groups where they were asked to create a restaurant with menus and prices and then present them to all participants in the most compelling way. Through this simulation, the participants learned how to plan, create and sell a business.
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Tri Anreianno, Head of Public Affairs Grab Indonesia
