With a Little Help, Love Beats Drugs
In 1999, the year the organization was founded, YCAB helped 2,000 youths get off of drugs, out of crime, and back into school. By 2012, that number had grown to 400,000. By 2015, it had soared to 3 million. There aren’t many organizations that can report such vast growth in just 16 years, and there are especially few in Indonesia, Myanmar, and Laos, the countries where YCAB currently operates. The key to YCAB’s success? Love. YCAB’s full name, Yayasan Cinta Anak Bangsa, translates to “Loving the Nation’s Children Foundation.”
In the 1990s, YCAB founder Veronica Colondam became alarmed with the strong correlation between increasing high school dropout rates and substance abuse and street crime among Indonesian youth. She quickly realized that this correlation represented both the problem and the solution. As such, YCAB bases its programs on three major ideas: combatting risky youth behaviors by promoting healthy lifestyle options; creating Learning Centers for dropouts; and running entrepreneurship and job creation programs that include microloans, seed capital, and vocational training. Health, education and economy in a context where youth feel loved, hopeful, and full of opportunity – that is the YCAB cocktail.
But the organization does not stop there. Colondam wanted her project to be sustainable, scalable, and long-lived. To ensure the organization’s lasting success, YCAB now sources its revenue streams both internally and externally. Its social enterprise model guarantees the sustainability of all programs. YCAB has sustainably covered all administrative costs since 2010, thanks to four businesses the organization established in 2000. Outside of its social entrepreneurship programs, YCAB taps into corporations’ CSR programs, governmental support, and international grants, including one offered by the US Department of State Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. YCAB also offers to mediate for public authorities, and is able to enter public-private partnerships that address the widespread modern plague of youth drug use and street crime.
Beyond its success as an organization, YCAB has proven that education and access to finances can help youths achieve a great deal. Love and respect can get kids back into school and away from substance dependency. From our vantage point, it seems that YCAB’s growth and international expansion is only just beginning.
