During the lockdown period (March – June) our team is looking for activities that we can do together in our “spare time” even if we’re away from each other. There were so many ideas came up from the team e.g. breaking the fast together (the lockdown period coincided on Ramadan), playing online games together, or sharing one new thing that we have learned every week.
Of these several fun ideas, there was one idea that we committed to run regularly: sharing stories and our interpretation of one book every week. This activity was quite challenging since not everyone was fond of reading books. On the other hand, this also motivates us to read more books (or to just finish one book) and learn how to express what we have learnt to each other.
After running it for a month and a half, we decided to deliver the concept to externals. Thus, our first book club, Seminggu Sebuku or A Week A Book was formed. We have a saying in Seminggu Sebuku, “learn one book every week, read one book every month.”
Learning one book every week is the core activity of the club, members can share their stories and interpretation of one book every week. Reading one book every month is the call to action. Inspired members will be motivated to read more books while they are also learning from each other.
In Seminggu Sebuku, a book is seen as a work of art. One person’s interpretation of an artwork could be different from another. A person can see it as “A”, while others can see it as “X.” One book can have multiple interpretations based on each member’s knowledge, expertise and experiences that he/she has gone through. This is what makes the discussions in Seminggu Sebuku interesting.
When we first launched Seminggu Sebuku to the public, we did not get many impressions. We thought, perhaps, people were still not aware of the club. We keep going with just a dozen people, then twenty, thirty, until finally, we have reached around 600 people in just 3 months.
For us, this is an achievement. Not only because of the growth of the members, but we can put hope from this community. A hope that everyone can learn from each other, a hope that everyone desires to contribute to a better society by sharing what they know or what they understand, a hope that through the initiation of Seminggu Sebuku, we can contribute to lower the rate of learning poverty in Indonesia.
Seminggu Sebuku is initiated under SociopreneurID Community. Until date, the club already has a total of 16 online sessions with approximately 600 registered members (and is still growing). Here is the list of books that have been discussed by our members:
- Educated (Tara Westover) by Dessy Aliandrina
- The Consciousness Instinct (Michael Gazzaniga) by Novianta Hutagalung
- Bumi Manusia (Pramoedya Ananta Toer) by Baginda Muda Bangsa
- Looptail (Bruce Poon Tip) by Cristian P. Setiawan
- Sapiens (Yuval Noah Harari) by Rakhmad Permana
- Self Driving (Rhenald Kasali) by Afriska Kusnia
- The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry) by Helma Nuraini
- Ikigai (Albert Liebermann and Hector Garcia) by F.X. Husni
- Unf*ck Yourself (Gary John Bishop) by Eric Cardianus
- Zero Degree of Empathy (Simon Baron-Cohen) by Donni Hadiwaluyo
- The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho) by Harjanto Halim
- The Finnish Way (Katja Pantzar) by Harry Pramono
- Belajar Pentigraf by Tengsoe Tjahjono
- Totto-chan (Tetsuko Kuroyanagi) by Irnova Suryani
- I Decided to Live As Myself (Kim Suhyun) by Sofina Fachlan
- Creativity, Inc. (Amy Wallace and Edwin Catmull) by Uning Musthofiyah
All sessions of Seminggu Sebuku are delivered in Bahasa.
Join the club here!
Click on this link to access selected sessions of Seminggu Sebuku.
