We got a chance to have an interesting conversation over the phone with Budhita “Budhsi” Kismadi. Budhsi is a creative community activist engaged in various issues such as the environment, education, human rights, culture and well-being in Indonesia. Budhsi is the co-founder of Inspirit, a group of trail-blazing facilitators who work in the non-profit and government sector in Indonesia.

Elami and Co has collaborated with Budhsi, especially during TEDxUbud, where she has hosted sessions with her incredible grace and compassion. Budhsi is an expert storyteller and incredibly good at helping people find their words and be comfortable in front of an audience. We talked to her about the power of events, how virtual events changed the game, and how facilitating can uncover what’s inside.

Hi Budhsi! How are you? Can you share what you are currently up to?

I’m good! I started my new routine back in April. I go to the office once a week. Currently, I am assisting a project development program. My team and I designed a closing event for a social inclusion program. The program is made to create space for the unseen and the unheard. Including the children of migrant laborers, children who are sexually exploited, and children in conflict with the law. We work with local institutions to provide rehabilitation, involving their family in the process. In this context, we built a safe space for the children to undergo a rehabilitation process with their families. We have 1965 survivors, indigenous people, and people from religious minorities joining the program.

I learned many things that I might not have known about. Some issues that were only on the news suddenly become the main things I studied. My team and I feel strongly about empowering people to tell their stories. When they are comfortable with telling the story, I am able to understand and empathize with them. Some are funny, heartwarming, or shocking.

There was one transwomen’s group that encounters a lot of discrimination. Our event facilitated bringing a group together with other community groups. One time we paired the trans group with a Kiai (religious leader) who had never talked to a trans person before. Unexpectedly, he was fully interested and listened to all the discrimination they had faced. We were nervous as one group blended in different ways. From that experience, we learned that they were actually creating their safe space in their own way. They went beyond economic and education status, allowing them to just be human beings, sharing in an equal interactive space. Another thing we learned was encountering inner or self discrimination is no less powerful than discrimination inflicted by others.

I like your nickname, how did you get it?

Budhsi comes from Budhita, my name. My mother is a Catholic Phillipina and my late father was a Muslim Indonesian. I was raised in a pluralistic family. In the Philippines, nicknames are common. When I was 2 years old, I was bald, big, and like to sit cross-legged like a smiling Budha statue. My grandmother said I was like a little Buddha. Because the Philippines was formerly colonized by Spain, she called me Budhita. It means little Buddha in Spanish. Then it became Budhsi for short.

What is your background?

Cultural Anthropology undergraduate in Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan. Anthropology in my university was specifically divided into physical and cultural. That was the best place for me at that time, knowing that Japan’s cultural life was so strong. I lived there for 7 years and worked in an archeological site. In Japan, if there’s an artifact found in the middle of the building site, an excavation process is a must. I love what I did. Once I found a beautiful cremation jar in an excavation area and we made a ceremony for it.

When I went home to Indonesia, I was thinking about continuing my study/career either in archeology or ethnomusicology. But then I asked myself, do I want to be a researcher? What do I want to be? In my family, community service is really important. I remember my dad asked me,” What is your task in life? Have you found it?”. A lot of my relatives work in NGOs. My father used to be the Minister of Environment in Indonesia. Climate change and sustainability have been ingrained in my head from the start. So I worked for an NGO that has donor projects with environmental NGOs. That’s where I got my connection to environmental NGOs and movements in Indonesia.

Then I applied for a scholarship for a Public Policy Master Degree in NTU. That was a program between NTU and Harvard Kennedy School. So I passed with a diploma from both universities. After I graduated, I continued to work for an organization that takes care of Canadian volunteers in Indonesia.

I have acquaintances from several environmental NGOs from that time and started to assist some of their events in my after-hours. Eventually, I got an offer to join facilitations. That’s how everything started.

Because of my working circle, I was exposed to various issues. I decided to not go deep into certain issues. My friend, Dani, and I built an organization where we are facilitating and improving facilitators in Indonesia. Inspirit is an umbrella organization where we offer services- the main one is vibrant facilitation. So now I am a vibrant facilitator.

What does a vibrant facilitator mean? And how do you as the vibrant facilitator create a meaningful event?

Vibrant Facilitation is a way of facilitation. Inspirit exists to design and create space and programs that allow participants to continue to grow and develop and have the competence to manage the changes they are facing. So we are not aiming to inspire, but to move people to inspire themselves. We are not motivators.

The alumnus of our courses are the ones who embody, bring life into a meeting, event, workshop, or any form of interaction by transmitting energy that enlivens the spaces with several values.

People who join our facilitation training have to be really interested in facilitating events, have empathy, and unconditionally respect others. We know that everyone has assumptions but to be aware of that and be present and non-judgemental needs practice.

Speaking of assumptions, some people associate vibrant facilitation with inciting activity. It’s because we often play music while facilitating. So they often just take away the idea of incorporating fun in the process. If we look deeper, we bring out the character and the feelings that are restored in the participants. Another thing a vibrant facilitator does is to awaken the senses. Our programs activate participants holistically, emotionally, rationally, and physically. All the senses are awakened by the Inspirit process. Full of life, in spirit, to give life.

How has the world of events changed for Inspirit now when we can’t do face to face anymore?

We entered the virtual event world when the pandemic hit. It is a new challenge for us because we need to transfer what we do at the venue to an online presence. So we tried, it took us 3 months but turned out to be really good. We experimented with spaces, aromatherapy, and colors. I also applied what I learned from a 3-day online facilitator intensive course— I decided to take the class last year in the quarantine period and I got so much from there. In the session, my facilitator trainer used mindfulness exercises.

“Relax, make sure you have water close to you, sit comfortably, think about where you are, and expand your imagination. Imagine we are sitting in the same space together. Shake out your arms, feel your feet, raise your arms. If anything comes in between, just remember we are under the same sky, on the same land. For the next 1 hour and 30 minutes we are in this space together.”

It completely changed the atmosphere. So I adapted it to our facilitation practice. Inspirit invests in the introduction. “Look around you… what do you see that you can show to the camera… what is your favorite color?”.

We started to have to lower our expectations and outputs. Meaning that we can’t do it as we did before. The longest we can do is 3 hours per day, with a long break. Yes, that’s risky. People tend to change their mood after the break. But that situation requires us to educate the clients. For example, we encourage them to create a surprise during the event, or host a podcast before the event. So it’s not just designing the process and how it is delivered, it activates our 5 senses. Now we have invested in the lighting, microphone, and any audiovisual equipment that is supporting what we do. Our office turned into a studio.

This vibrant facilitator dream started with our being tired of really bad meetings. Also, many meetings only give opportunities to certain people to talk. They cast out introverts. What we do is to shine a light on them but not in a way that forces them to be under the spotlight.

Many of the alumni experienced change within themselves after the facilitation training. On how they treat other people, rediscovering something about themselves, or even falling in love again with their spouses. I guess because the reflection session at the end of our facilitation has always been an important part of training.

What makes you interested in what you do? Is there a favorite thing that you’re always looking to get out of a person when you are facilitating?

Hmmm, I find my calling through books actually. I say to myself every time before I start doing an event, change the way you see everything, change the way you see yourself and your situation. I see every person who comes into facilitating, hoping that they will find something that is usually already within them.

What I do requires listening and sharing stories of where my roots are. When I told you my name, I shared the story behind it so you change the way you see me. When I did it, I remembered it again and so on. In the facilitation process, we allow everyone to share what they want to share instead of what we want them to share.

From there, we can learn once again, to hear and respond. We will find similarities and differences. Those small changes that we look for on a personal level. I like to hear what they learn on a deeper level too. Interestingly, we often get deep reflections. One that I remember dearly is an answer from a kid. He was a volunteer in an organization that is active in social inclusion issues. He said that he turned out to be great (as a person). I was so moved.

I think that’s why we resonate with what Elami and Co does. Everybody who walks out from TEDxUbud experienced everything in 5 senses. And you do it in everything you do.

Is there a remarkable experience you want to share with us?

Our vision is Inspirit Indonesia Keren 2045. We work to build the vision by assisting participants to create their vision boards -so to get Indonesians dreaming about Indonesia. We ask them to make personal vision boards, but also think about what kind of Indonesia they want to have. Inspirit did this once with a women’s group in eastern Indonesia. Fast forward to 4 years later, we did a women’s leadership workshop there. So we also visited alumni on our trip. There was one lady who chased me showing her vision board to me. She said almost everything is achieved. She wanted to go to school and she did it. So now she wants to make a vision board together with her family.

What are the hobbies you use to recharge? Can you share what you hold onto to keep you sane these days?

To recharge and keep me sane, I play with my pets! They are my source of energy to keep me grounded. I am a rescuer, so I live with 20 cats, 5 dogs, 2 birds, 1 turtle. Some of the cats live in my neighbor’s house. The turtle is so special to me, it’s over 20 years old and it likes to stay in the garden. So I have an official guardian of the garden. I live with my mom and 2 staff members to help me take care of my animal friends.

Other than that, I started journaling again after the pandemic. Somehow a lot of things I started in the early year faded away because I went back to facilitating.