The EngageMedia Team
Airani Sasanti – Administration and Program Officer (Yogyakarta)
Born in Indonesia, Airani started working in 2008 as a content writer and journalist in the Visit Indonesian Year event. In the same year, she worked as an administration assistant in kotakhitam forum, an independent organisation which focuses on research, workshops, and documentary film production for social change in Indonesia.
In 2015, she joined documentary production house Banjarsari Film, where she worked as an assistant producer, responsible for pre-production design and planning, and as an administration coordinator for the film, ‘Di Kaliurang’.
As Administration and Program Assistant at EngageMedia, Airani’s role is to support the work of the Finance and Administration Coordinator, Operations Coordinator, and to provide logistical support to project managers.
Languages: English, Bahasa Indonesia, Javanese
Apriliyani Sory – Finance and Administration Coordinator (Yogyakarta)
Apriliyani (Linie) graduated in 2006 from the English Department of UKSW in Salatiga, Jawa Tengah and started working as a translator for Plan International in the same year. Ever since, she has worked for various international non-profit organizations (Plan, Care, Save the Children, Handicap, Hivos), government institutions, and the United Nations (FAO), mostly providing support in administration, finance, logistics, procurement, translation and interpreting.
An effective communicator, Linie is experienced in organizing project events and working with different kinds of accounting software used by non-profits, possessing the ability to quickly adapt to new systems.
As Admin and Finance Coordinator, Linie’s main role is to manage the administration, human resources and finance/accounting of Engagemedia under the direct supervision of the Executive Director and the Master Accountant in Australia.
Languages: English, Bahasa Indonesia
Andrew Lowenthal – Executive Director
Andrew has been working in the field of media and technology activism since 1998 when he joined community television show Access News in Melbourne, Australia. His work traverses the fields of organisational development, video production, network building, research, software development, and project and event management.
Andrew was active in the Indymedia network from 2000-2006. From 2006-08 he worked with the UK based Tactical Technology Collective as their Participatory Media Project Lead, editing the NGO-in-a-box and Message-in-a-box open source communications toolkits.
Andrew was previously a Fellow at Harvard's Film Studies Center and Berkman Center for Internet & Society, and MIT's Open Documentary Lab. In 2015 he was a Ford Foundation JustFilm's Fellow.
Languages: English, Spanish, Italian, Bahasa Indonesia
Kartika Pratiwi – Project Manager: Indonesia (Yogyakarta)
Tika has been an independent researcher with an interest in narrative discourse on the 1965 Tragedy in Indonesia, Chinese-Indonesian issues and alternative pedagogy since 2008. She has been a part of kotakhitam forum, an independent organisation focuses on research, workshops and documentary movie production for social change. During that time, she has produced three documentary films and several video archives on Indonesian political history and collective memory. She regularly runs projects to assist history teachers and youth to use popular media as a learning tool in schools.
She was also previously a fellow at John Darling Fellowship 2017 by The Herb Feith Foundation
As Project Manager at EngageMedia, Tika works to ensure the effective implementation of EngageMedia programs and projects in Indonesia.
Languages: English, Bahasa Indonesia, Javanese
King Catoy – Video For Change Coordinator (Manila)
King Catoy is an independent documentary filmmaker and alternative media practitioner in the Philippines. His roots in activism started as a student leader in the University of the Philippines Los Baños, where he took up Development Communication. He studied 16mm film documentary at the Mowelfund Film Institute in Quezon City, Philippines and went on to co-found the film collective Southern Tagalog Exposure in 2001.
In 2009, he became executive director of Mayday Multimedia, a video collective focusing on workers issues, and in 2012, became multimedia director of the non-profit media group PinoyMedia Center Inc. He currently sits on the Board of Directors of AlterMidya- People’s Alternative Media Center, a national network of independent and grassroots-based media outfits in the Philippines. He has also worked on several video advocacy projects with Pesticide Action Network Asia and the Pacific.
He has directed numerous videos and trained indigenous and urban poor communities and alternative media practitioners on video production.
Language: English, Filipino.
Nuna Afra Farhanggi – Finance and Administration Assistant (Yogyakarta)
Nuna is a passionate person who active in many organisation as secretary, public relation, co-trainer or coordinator. She graduated in 2016, during college she was active in Aceh dance community as dancer and manager in RampoeUGM Community. She joined in International Folklore Festival Europe which held by CIOFF and UNESCO in 2014. At the same time she active as campus journalist, co-leadership trainer and social volunteer. In 2016 she was volunteer in Indonesian Kidney Donor and coordinator of World Kidney Day in Yogyakarta. After graduated, she was work in Hello Indonesia Corp. (new cultural diplomation startup company). Before join with Engagemedia, she was a volunteer in International Refugee Service Organisation.
As Finance and Administration Program Assistant at EngageMedia, Nuna’s role is to support the work of the Finance and Administration Coordinator, Administration and Program Assistant, Operations and Grant Manager and to provide logistical support to project managers.
Languages: English, Bahasa Indonesia, Javanese
Nikholas Borang – Content and Training Coordinator (Yogyakarta)
Borang Yerry Niko is an independent journalist based in Yogyakarta. While studying in university in 1998, he joined the student democracy movement and produced several propaganda bulletins. From 1999, working with publishers in Yogyakarta, he helped translate several English books on politics and literature into Indonesian, including Orwell's Animal Farm.
In 2004 he participated in early meetings to rebuild Indymedia Jakarta. He worked as a radio/web/video journalist for more than six years at vhrmedia.com. During that time, he also worked with community radio and media networks.
Languages: English, Indonesian + Javanese, Manadonese
Nica Dumlao – Digital Rights Coordinator (Manila)
Nica is a feminist activist who has been involved in the social justice movement since she entered the University of the Philippines in 2002. She started to work on the intersection of human rights and information and communications technologies in 2008, organizing a series of discussions among workers in the business process outsourcing industry.
Nica led the crafting of the Philippine Declaration on Internet Rights & Principles and the convening of the Future of PHInternet, the first ever Philippine multistakeholder forum on internet governance, human rights, and development when she was the Internet Rights Program Manager of the Foundation for Media Alternatives. She currently sits in the steering committee of the Philippine Internet Freedom Alliance (PIFA), the broadest nationwide alliance of Internet freedom advocates in the country, that challenged the unconstitutional provisions of the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 before the Supreme Court. She is also Board Secretary of the ASEAN SOGIE Caucus.
As Digital Rights Coordinator in EngageMedia, Nica oversees its initiatives to expand and strengthen the digital rights movement in Southeast Asia.
Languages: English, Filipino
Pitra Hutomo – Project Coordinator: Indonesia (Yogyakarta)
Pitra Hutomo was born and raised in Jakarta. She moved to Yogyakarta in 2002 to pursue a degree in Earth Sciences. Pitra worked for the Indonesian Visual Art Archive (IVAA) for more than 10 years, where she was the coordinator of research as well as the acting director. She joined EngageMedia in 2017 following her role as logistics coordinator for the Camp COCONET.
Being trained as archivist and systems analyst, Pitra helped the foundation of IVAA's Online Inventory on Indonesian Modern and Contemporary Art documents. The experience brought her to programs such as Travelling Fellow of Asia Cultural Council, Research Fellow under French Cultural Centre Indonesia and Archivist Exchange under Australia's Art Gallery of New South Wales.
Her non professional initiatives comprise of documentary making practices under collectives such as Video Report, Hyphen and Uripurup where she advocates substantive land rights and rights to the city for marginalised communities.
Language: Bahasa Indonesia, English, Javanese, Sundanese, French.
Rezwanul Islam – Communications and Outreach Coordinator (Kuala Lumpur)
Rezwanul Islam has long experience in the field of citizen and social media. For more than 15 years, he has been writing for local and international citizen media sites/blogs. He is a longtime contributor to Global Voices, an international non-profit citizen media organization and leads its newsroom for South Asia. He previously worked as a jury at the Deutsche Welle Best of The Blogs (BOBS) Awards and also worked for Al Jazeera Plus as a node editor for South Asia.
As a freelancer researcher, translator, and consultant, he has contributed to different advocacy and human rights projects over the years. He has experience in developing communications strategies and campaigns for non-profits. In Bangladesh, his work experience includes serving as a consultant for UNDP in different projects, especially for Citizen’s Voice (Nagorik Kontho), a citizen journalism portal.
He had lived in a number of cities in the Asia Pacific region such as Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur and Canberra in the past decade.
Language: Bengali, English, German
Widy Dinarti – Operations and Grant Manager (Jakarta)
Widy Dinarti is a social impact innovator and an impactful life and cross cultural coach. After obtaining a Bachelor's Degree in International Relations from University of Airlangga, Surabaya, Indonesia, she has conducted social and humanitarian projects in collaboration with variety of organisations, both in non-profit and private, at a local and international level in India, South East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and Indian Ocean regions.
Widy was also a recipient of several awards including the Deutsche Post DHL Global Corporate Responsibility Awards in 2015 for her Youth Employability Project in South Africa and Youth Business Incubator Project in Uganda. Recently, she was selected to represent Indonesia in HANDs! Asia Project, a Japan Foundation Fellowship Programme in creative and innovative education for humanity; and as one of the fellows for IDEAS 6.0 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Executive Education Programme.
Widy also supports startups and social enterprises in their organizational development and business development projects.
Language: Bahasa Indonesia, Javanese, English.
