SIS-PIK Students Shift the Narrative at TEDxSIS-PIK Youth 2026
The SIS-PIK Mini Auditorium was transformed into a stage for ideas on Saturday, 22 August 2026. TEDxSIS-PIK Youth 2026 brought together roughly eighty students, teachers and guests for an independently organised TEDx event built around the theme ‘Shifting the Narrative,’ following the TED DNA of bringing people together for meaningful conversation and inspiring ideas. Hosts Mr Marcelo and Ms Roschelle opened the morning with a challenge to the room: to look at the familiar through an unfamiliar lens.

Behind the scenes, TEDxSIS-PIK Youth 2026 was the product of a Creativity, Activity, Service (CAS) project undertaken by Grade 12 IBDP students’ Grant Ananta Bodhiprabha and Audrey Keira Widiyanto. Working alongside a wider team of Grade 12 students, the pair took on the full scope of independently organising a TEDx event – from securing sponsors and confirming speakers to coordinating logistics for the day itself. The smooth run of proceedings, from a punctual morning start through to an orderly lunch changeover and a full afternoon session, reflected months of planning by the student-led team.

The morning session, Session 1, opened with author and insurance consultant Yosephine Salim, who drew on a childhood in a house that doubled as a catering mess in North Jakarta to talk about the creative instincts behind her varied career. She was followed by Grade 11 student Alexandra Niccole Usmany, who has ‘never known a world without plastic’ and used her talk to challenge assumptions about current solutions to plastic pollution, drawing on her own research into biotechnology.

Mr Dwi Firli Ashari, Head of the High School Indonesian Department, spoke next on treating language, civics and literature as gateways into culture and into lives beyond a student’s own. Session 1 closed with Director of Performing Arts Ms Gan Tze Yun (Debbie Gan), who spoke on how music and theatre build students’ confidence, communication, and sense of belonging.

After a lunch break – which hosts encouraged students to spend continuing the morning’s conversations — Session 2 opened with 15-year-old Natascha Adeline Ziliwu, co-founder of the cultural textile brand Tuwu Nukhada, who spoke on reviving and sharing Nias heritage through contemporary weaving. Physics and Engineering educator Mr Andrei Espencer Mayol Ordonio followed, drawing on his research background in quantum thermodynamics to frame growth as a kind of phase transition.

Clarissa Hamashiach Tarigan and Michelle Malpine Sondang Tobing, co-founders of the student-led health initiative Food Access, delivered a joint talk on why changing the narrative around personal choices is a first step toward a healthier future. Grade 10 student and Model United Nations participant Charlito Rizki Gunawan closed the speaker programme, challenging the audience to weigh whether societies should preserve existing systems or adapt to meet new realities.

The event ended with certificates presented to all eight speakers and a group photograph bringing together speakers, organisers, and audience. In their final remarks, Mr Marcelo and Ms Roschelle urged students not simply to remember the day, but to carry its questions forward.

For organisers Grant Ananta Bodhiprabha and Audrey Keira Widiyanto, the day’s success was the payoff of a CAS project built on careful, collaborative planning. With their Grade 12 committee members handling everything from sponsorship outreach to on-the-day logistics, the event ran without a hitch — a result that speaks to the strength of the student-led organisation at SIS-PIK.

TEDxSIS-PIK Youth 2026 was co-presented by Gold Sponsor I CAN Education, Silver Sponsors English 1 Pantai Indah Kapuk, Topui’kia Hawker Kopitiam, Bear and Butter, and Eminence, and Bronze Sponsor Suite and Share.