February 16, 2016 edition

SHANDRA Woworuntu still remembers the day she received an email from the office of President Barrack Obama in September 2015, offering her to become a member of the US Advisory Council on Human Traffickingthe first of its kind. The email also requested for her biodata.
For a long spell, Shandra was in a state of disbelief. "I didn't even pay attention to it," recalled the 39-year-old resident of New York City three weeks ago. She sent in her data only after she was convinced that the email was indeed from the White House.

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More Horizons articles in other editions

February 2, 2016 edition

Irendra Radjawali, 39, came to a coffee shop in Central Jakarta wearing a blue t-shirt and a pair of khaki shorts. "I'm not a suit-and-tie type of person," said Radja, as he is known by family and friends, apologizing for his informal clothing. He looked energetic despite having flown to Jakarta that morning from Pontianak, West Kalimantan. Radja explained that he had just spent four days in Kalimantan to operate drones used to assist in spatial mapping in the area.
The drones are all designed by Irendra, who currently works as a researcher at Bonn University in Germany. He consulted what he called the best university on earthYouTube videosto learn how to make his own drone three years ago. And this came about after his research work, collecting data from the Kapuas River in West Kalimantan.

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January 12, 2016 edition

Film director Livi Zheng sent the following message last month when she was about to meet Tempo for an interview. "I'm still on a shoot, running late. Is it possible to meet at 5:30pm?" It seems she was being interviewed by a Jakarta TV station. "It's for the new year," she explained later.
Zheng, 26, was one very busy person, during her six-month trip home to Indonesia after an absence of 15 years. She was not only in demand as an interviewee by the media, Zheng also gave lectures at Gadjah Mada University, the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) and Surabaya University.

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December 22, 2015 edition

Eni Lestari Andayani's cellphone never stops ringing. She might as well be a walking, talking call center. Almost every day, Eni, 36, takes between five to 15 calls or short messages through WhatsApp and Facebook. Like her, the callers are domestic workers holding jobs in Hong Kong. But to them, she has become the confidante whom they can pour out their grievances.
The number of callers further increased seven years ago when Eni came to be chairperson of the International Migrant Alliance, an alliance of migrant workers from 32 countries. The grievances vary, from working relations with their employers to their rights over family matters. The latest case involved a worker form Pati, Central Java, who complained about the Indonesian government's new data recording system that implicated her in forging documents. As a result, since December 11, the person has been detained in a Hong Kong prison.

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