Sewing Fabrics &

Preparing the Future

Be independent by making bags

A failure is a condition of inability to achieve goal that has been set before.  However, it is normal in life even it can be said that everyone has ever faced failure in his/her life. Even famous figures, can not be separated from failure as written in biography books which always contains stories from struggle, sacrifice, repeated failures and finally success.

Students commonly face failures, such as in study, in organization, even to fail to survive, especially students who go study in different island. The failure experiences are good reflection and good meaning as a stepping stone to success. With optimistic perspective, more failure will make one to be more mature and then it will forge him to think variety skills and abilities to overcome problems and how to anticipate it.

Additional skills, besides the knowledge from campus become the strategies presented in ‘Learning from Failure’ training with a theme ‘Per Angusta Ad Augusta’ (from Difficulties to Glory) held by Stube-HEMAT Yogyakarta on October18-20, 2019 at Villa Taman Eden 1, Kaliurang. The various life strategies that found in this training came from the 'sharing' experiences of the participants when they face failure and find solutions.

One group of students consists of Yoel, Maritjie, Thomas, and Eri Kristian was eager to have skills in sewing, as their effort to open opportunity to get extra pocket money. Yoel Yoga Dwianto as facilitator, already has expertise in making backpacks with a label ‘Anakita’ Bags, because currently Yoel works at this business as an employee. He likes to share with young people who are eager to learn, he is very open to anyone as long as he/she has strong will and passion. He trained them to arrange used fabric from bag manufacturer and learned how to operate sewing machines, make pattern on the fabrics, cut the fabric and sew the pieces. In fact, they needed only two meetings to produce one simple bag. In the first meeting, they learned to operate machines, and to sew used-cloth, then in the second meeting, they practiced to sew their own bags and they brought home their own bag at the end of the course.

The difficulties faced by Yoel as a student from Kotabumi, Lampung, who is studying in Yogyakarta, such as limitation to pay tuition, people doubt his ability, and the dead of his father due to illness, had forced him for campus leave and started working for money to continue his study. He did many things, starting with cultivating vegetable garden, being professional jimbe player, opening barbershop, providing reggae hair and finally working on bag home industry. These difficulties forge him to be a person who is tough but still generous in sharing knowledge.

"I am open to anyone who wants to learn, but I also select those who have intention and passion to learn, because it is useless if I push someone to learn but he/she has no intention, the result will be not good. My enthusiasm is seeing friends who have big interest, then I invite them to learn together," he said.

Young friends, especially those who study in Yogyakarta, no matter how hard the problem you are facing during your study, never be easy to give up, but  try to dig out the roots of your problems and find solution by equipping yourself with various skills so you can do good things more, with spirit of Per Angusta Ad Augusta. (Mariano Lejap)