Innovation

XLFL engaged with an education consultant from New Zealand to create a soft skill curriculum to be implemented in the learning process. Within a two-year program of XLFL, participants are given some topics to discuss with their group and their facilitator. XLFL uniquely combined digital learning with face-to-face seminars and workshops which is embedded with the real work life experience, where they can collaborate online with their group and have a consultative session with their facilitators using facilities that are given by XLFL.

Along the years, XLFL keeps evolving and created some breakthrough sub-programs and projects, such as Telco Challenge, Social Innovation Programs (SIP) and CEO Challenge, where the participants can experience to become XL Board of Directors for a week.

Non-XLFL participants can also get access to XL E-Learn, one of the few Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC), as it is free and open to everyone, where they can access the curriculum materials and evaluate their learning progress online.

Inspiration

According to the statistics of Indonesia, Indonesia will gain a bonus demography, where the population of productive age will reach its peak in the history, by 2020-2035. In order to make sure that this bonus demography is meaningful to support Advance Indonesia 2030, the development of the young generation is needed to ensure that Indonesia has enough future leaders to support Indonesia in facing global challenges. The development of proper education and facilities is still a big challenge. XLFL began with the vision to reduce the education disparities by providing good quality education that can be accessed by everyone and everywhere.

Overall impact

Since 2012, XLFL has changed the lives and inspired over 50,000 university students, not only to be Indonesia’s most prospective future leaders that have a global mindset, but also as a young generation that creates an impact and spreads the good influence to their societies. In summary, following are the positive impacts from XLFL since the beginning of the program:

• 50,000 applicants since 2012
• 550 students accepted
• More than 90 innovations in telco industry generated
• 61 universities represented
• 30 provinces across Indonesia included (from Aceh to Papua)
• 1,902 people enrolled XL E-Learn (MOOC, online learning)
• More than 3,500 hours intensive sessions conducted per year
• 62 student-led projects in education, technology, food, environment and women empowerment

As a result, XLFL has brought the impactful journey and global exposure to its participants. Many of them are representing Indonesia to the Global Forum and some of them are starting their own business, getting recognition nationwide and gaining funding from the Ministry of Small/Medium Enterprises Indonesia to expand their business. One of the XLFL alumni, Leonika Sari, is listed as Forbes ’30 under 30’ with her innovative idea, Reblood.

Business benefit

“XL Future Leaders is recognized as a sustainable program that cares for education improvement in Indonesia as well as a program that has strong alignment with its core business,” said Achmad Pradipta, people behind XL Future Leaders who nurture this program for years. During two years of intensive development journey, XLFL Global Thinking participants will be given some projects in order to improve three core competencies. One of the signature project in XLFL is Telco Challenge. In Telco Challenge, the participants will be given some business cases that are related to XL Axiata’s core business as a telecommunication provider, which need to be solved. “In some months during our learning and development program, there is a time when we have to regroup and work on digitalization project in Telco Challenge. The concept that we have created within group, will then be presented to XL Top Leaders. The selected ideas will get some money to implement the idea. One of my friend’s idea was being implemented as a retail product in Digital Service unit,” Ubaydillah Yus’an explained as one of the alumni from XLFL program. Through Telco Challenge, other than cultivating the entrepreneurship and innovation mindset of the participants, PT XL Axiata reaps benefits from the ideas gathered and the concepts that are being implemented as products or services in XL.

The XLFL program also contributes to image building and the reputation of PT XL Axiata. “Stakeholder nowadays is not only concerned about the financial report of a company, but also they want to know how the company contributes to the social and environment,” explained Achmad Pradipta. “Since our first program launched in 2012, we gained 15,212,712,500 of AD Value and 47,899,717,500 of PR Value from the positive publication about XL Future Leader program,” he added.

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Social and environmental benefit

XLFL is a proud supporter of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). To celebrate its five-year anniversary in November 2016, XLFL kicked off 35 social projects from its Social Innovation Projects (SIP), a program under XLFL umbrella. These projects are made originally by students from all over Indonesia, where the projects at least should address 1 SDG and are scalable, using a human-centered design approach. The social projects were being implemented in 15 provinces across Indonesia, engaging around 115 stakeholders (including government, NGO, universities and communities) and have impacted over 5,000 people in the execution process.

Ayobacain (literal translation: let’s read) is a sample from 35 social projects which successfully implemented to promote quality education that is accessible for all people. Looking to the fact that only 2,000 out of 3.76 million visually impaired people in Indonesia get access to Braille books, Ayobacain came as a solution, providing audio books in DAISY (Digital Accessible Information System, a system specifically designed for people with “print disabilities”) format, that can be accessed from everywhere. Cipto Rustianto in an interview session said, “We are trying to encourage people to make use of the internet to empower people. Through Ayobacain, the volunteers can contribute to convert Braille books that are relatively expensive, to some audiobooks that are easy to access.”

Cipto also mentioned there are 2,000 volunteers who joined this good cause, which can be scalable to massive social movement to read books for visually impaired people. Both the people in need and the volunteers can easily access the audiobooks for free and record themselves reading books in Ayobacain website and application. As the first application in Indonesia which converts conventional books to the audiobooks, Ayobacain obtained the position of Top 5 Social Business Project in Community Program Leaders Ayamin Plus held by NAMA Foundation, Ghadan Institute.

Interview

Achmad Pradipta, Manager of Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability at PT XL Axiata, Tbk

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