Jakarta, June 27, 2026
Widya Erti Indonesia has launched the AKAR Campaign (Action, Collaboration, Access, and Regeneration), a collaborative movement to strengthen youth regeneration and participation in village development. This campaign encourages concrete actions that engage young people from both rural and urban areas to collaborate with the government, academia, the private sector, the media, and civil society. Through this collaboration, it is hoped that rural youth will gain access to networks, information, knowledge, and personal development opportunities so they can contribute and build their villages in a sustainable manner.
The AKAR campaign was launched during a public dialogue titled “Rural Youth as Catalysts for Sustainable Development” at Taman Ismail Marzuki in Jakarta on Saturday, June 27.
The launch of the AKAR Campaign stems from the challenge of population renewal faced by many villages in Indonesia. Data from the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) in *Indonesian Migration Statistics: Results of the Long-Form Population Census*, published in 2023, shows that more than half of the rural residents who migrate to cities in Indonesia are young people aged 20–39. This phenomenon indicates that population mobility in Indonesia is dominated by the young, productive age group.
As more and more young people in rural areas choose to leave, these villages risk losing the human resources needed to continue development and harness their local potential.
Mercrys, a young person from Lembang Maroson in Toraja, believes that access to networks and knowledge is a key factor in enabling young people to harness their village’s potential: “If young people in the village have strong networks and access to knowledge, we can innovate by developing the potential that exists around the village.”
This perspective is also a focus for the government in strengthening the quality of the younger generation in rural areas: “Urbanization is an inevitable part of the dynamics of development. However, villages must remain spaces that offer hope for the younger generation to develop their potential and skills. Therefore, strengthening the capacity of rural human resources must go hand in hand with expanding access and fostering cross-sectoral collaboration,” said Dicky Yosepial, Head of the Human Resources Training Center at the Ministry of Villages and Disadvantaged Regions.
To address this need, Widya Erti Indonesia launched the AKAR Campaign as a collaborative movement to strengthen access and build the capacity of the younger generation in rural communities. “Rural communities are not lacking in potential, but they often lack opportunities for their young people to thrive. The AKAR Campaign aims to build an ecosystem that opens up access, strengthens capacity, and expands collaboration so that young people can see villages as promising places to build their future,” said Wiranatha Krisna, Director of Widya Erti Indonesia.
Through the AKAR Campaign, Widya Erti Indonesia invites all stakeholders to work together to build an ecosystem that enables the younger generation to view villages not only as their place of origin, but also as a space to create, innovate, and lead sustainable development.
