By early 2025, funding for social impact work across Asia-Pacific was being pulled back. The shutdown of USAID affected many of the partners and communities we’d been working with, and brought an end to a partnership we had built for a decade.

USAID provided the space through a multi-year commitment to design, test, and iterate on best practices. Through that work, we developed approaches to convening, co-creation, and capacity building that became core to how we work.

As program cycles came to a close, we wanted to further understand the enduring impact of our work on participants.

Saring Daring was a two-year program where we brought together USAID and Meta to equip over 300 Indonesian university students from 10 universities with digital literacy and campaigning skills. Through a structured learning journey of masterclasses, bootcamps, and mentorship, we challenged students to design and run their own campaigns on misinformation and responsible participation in online spaces, reaching over 87 million people across Instagram and Facebook.

While the program formally concluded in 2024, its influence persists. We asked two former participants, Bella and El Rasontha, to reflect on how the program shaped them.