The Altruist, tackling Challenges in Healthcare

Ade Nurul Safrina, WeCare.ID

Ms Ade Nurul Safrina is a true humanitarian at heart. Growing up in Indonesia made her see how poverty and inequality hinders nation’s growth and development. This led her to believe that investing in people and community is the key in bringing sustainable development in the world.

“My passion always lies in between Poverty Eradication and the involvement of cultures & art on overcoming it. By that, I view myself as a humanitarian.”, she says. She considers humanitarian as a perspective of living and not only as a profession. It was the true calling of her heart on making rightful contributions for the people especially to certain area, seed business and community who need the most.

Ms. Ade holds Masters of Science in Policy Economics degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), and Bachelor of Economics from University of Indonesia and has worked for many companies and organization in Southeast Asia, Timor and United States. She came back to Indonesia with an ambitious mission to make this world a better place to live in by eradicating all social evils.

Her partnership – WeCare.ID was established with the purpose and believes to provide equal healthcare facilities to everyone. WeCare.ID is a crowd funding website that funds low cost healthcare services for individuals/patients who cannot afford it or does not have optimal access to Indonesia’s Government Insurance.

Here are some more insights from the her journey, as shared with Team ABT.

Who is your greatest inspiration and Why?
I never think of only one, so my lists are Mother (MardianaDaoed), Maya Angelou& Muhammad Yunus of Grameen Bank. In my perspective, they are epitome of accomplishing & strong personalities who have holistic & humanly approaches in every of their works.

What led you to choose Social Sector as a profession/career?
My educational background is in economics & finance, and once had been struggling in the corporate world, to central bank (Bank Indonesia), to venture capital, before finally advanced to my Masters in the US. Working here and there, I came to the conclusion that I would not feel at ease if I live a profession solely to make ends meet. My main concern is human & society welfare. So I choose to always work and work in a profession that has its share in the “humanitarian” world. Whether it is an entrepreneur, economist, NGO worker or working in Social Enterprise (re: www.wecare.id).

What is “We Care” all about?
WeCare.id believes that every individual in Indonesia deserves a decent healthcare. However, in reality, not all Indonesians have access to good health services because of the areas that are difficult to reach, financially limited, and have no National Health Insurance (NHI).

WeCare.id is a website built specifically to raise funds for patients in remote or remote areas who need access to optimal health care and NHI. We work with medical expertise in the peripheral area to connect us with these patients so they can get treatment and other support facilities thoroughly.

Tell us about the initiatives at Wecare.id that’s impacting lives.
Through WeCare.id crowd sourcing capability:

Prospective medical expertise can act as informants for prospective patients that need medical health immediately; and

Prospective donors can view the list and information of patients, choose the patients they wish to assist, and then provide assistance by donating starting from twenty-five thousand Rupiah.

All transactions conducted will be displayed transparently on our website. WeCare.id also greatly appreciates and supports the National Health Insurance program from the BPJS (Social Security Administering Body) and the government that makes it easier for the public to get adequate health services. But until now there are still many Indonesian people in remote areas / very remote or underprivileged people who do not have the NHI.

Therefore, WeCare.id facilitates them to process their NHI ownership as well as paying NHI premiums for underprivileged patients. We make healthcare accessible by tackling the reality that is happening in the field; inaccessibility cause by insufficient funds, lack of information portals, and infrastructure lacks (esp. for communities located in rural areas)

Could you recall any one proud moment/milestone?
On one year period since we established; we hit 1billion rupiah healthcare fund pooled on our portal & distributed it to over 100 patients in 15 provinces, marking us as the fastest growing crowdfunding platform in Indonesia.

If you were to do one thing differently, what would that be?
Nothing. But I have always wished I started my initiatives earlier & more courage J

Did you face any challenges? How did you overcome them?
As much as we want this to sustain, we also realize we can not solely relying our core activity in crowd funding for charity / healthcare donation. As for now, WeCare.id runs leanly with team of few numbers of people and the challenges of scaling up have always been in our agenda. We are looking for other options & idea for innovative healthcare to be grasped soon.

What would you like to achieve in coming year?
Increasing the tractions & presence of WeCare.id; hopefully we can enable this not only in Indonesia. Additionally, new product & service lines beside crowdfunding portal will also in our master plan over the coming year.