Together, nurses and midwives make up half of the global health workforce, but far more nurses and midwives are needed to address the current and growing needs. Latest projections from the World Health Organization estimate that the world will need an additional 9 million nurses and midwives by 2030 to reach Sustainable Development Goals.
Southeast Asia faces one of the largest needs for nurses and midwives. This is the context in which DANAdidik was founded, with the goal of making higher education more accessible to students in Indonesia.
DANAdidik helps to address one of the key barriers preventing people from pursuing a career in health: cost. It does this by facilitating a soft-loan service that connects students with loans which are then recycled and made available to additional students to help them pay for their education.
DANAdidik’s founding stemmed from the personal experiences of its co-founders, Januar Sudharsono and Dipo Satria. Januar found himself struggling to pay off his student loans, and Dipo saw his own mother and wife struggle to pay back their tuition. Together, they sought to develop a way to ensure that education was more accessible and liberating -- rather than financially daunting. To date, DANAdidik has fully funded the education of 750+ students and counting in Indonesia where both Januar and Dipo reside.
Looking specifically at the health sector, where Johnson &Johnson Impact Ventures (J&J Impact Ventures) has unique expertise, the clear pathway for prospective nurses must be a global priority to ensure the delivery of quality primary and community care in the era of COVID-19 and beyond. This means investments in and support of these kinds of innovative platforms built for the next generation of health professionals will continue to be essential. To help make this a reality, since 2019, Johnson & Johnson Impact Ventures has provided DANAdidik with funding from the Johnson & Johnson Foundation that allowed Januar and Dipo to build the first Indonesian perpetual nursing fund, specifically for nursing students to receive low-cost loans with low interest rates. DANAdidik creates its funding cycle by recycling payments from students paying off their loans, so that these same loans are available to additional nursing students. This self-sustaining model allows nursing students to get the education they need to thrive on the front lines of care without sacrificing economic stability.
We’re now seeing the results of this work in action. The first DANAdidik nursing cohort recently graduated from the loan program. Meet some of the graduates who leveraged loans from DANAdidik to launch a career in health:
Neny Setia Ningsih
Neny Setia Ningsih is the youngest of five children from the small village of Siantar in North Sumatra. Neny always dreamed of working as a frontline health worker. To do so, Neny would need both a bachelor’s degree and the proper certification. She didn’t want to ask her parents for financial support, so she applied for a loan from DANAdidk.
Neny currently works as a surgical nurse at Mitra Medika Hospital in Medan, Indonesia.
Eka Nurfaizah
Being the eldest child of farmers, becoming a caregiver was not always Eka Nurfaiza’s first choice. She initially wanted to work at a manufacturing company, but her plans changed when she realized her passion for caregiving. Eka wanted to focus her care on the elderly, and she decided to study in Japan. Unfortunately, the cost of studying in Japan was almost 10 times more than her parents’ income. Her parents always told her to dream big, so she applied for a loan through DANAdidik.
Currently, Eka works as an apprentice at a nursing home for the elderly in Japan.
Laras Setiyar
Laras Settiyar is the eldest of three children from Semarang, West Java. When she was 17, she lost her mother. However, even in the face of tragedy, she remained committed to her dream of becoming a frontline health worker. The COVID-19 pandemic made it difficult for her family to make ends meet, and she wasn’t sure she’d be able to afford nursing school. Laras was ultimately able to get the funding she needed to get her associate’s degree through DANAdidik
Laras moved to Jakarta to help support her family and pursue her career. Currently, she works as a caregiver and helps with COVID-19 vaccination efforts in Jakarta.
J&J Impact Ventures strives to invest in entrepreneurs and health workers dedicated to making health systems around the globe more accessible to all. DANAdidik provides the resources these students need to pursue their passions and achieve their goals of becoming frontline health workers, ultimately helping to address the ongoing shortage of health workers around the globe. With social enterprises like DANAdidik at the helm, we inch closer to bringing good health to everyone, everywhere.