The Second Cohort: When Yesterday's Trainees Become Today's Trainers

In May 2023, HKBP Ujung Menteng's youth leadership and public communication program returned for a second cohort — 42 young people, mostly confirmation-age students, working through five weekend sessions plus an online follow-up, delivered in partnership with the trained facilitators of Yayasan Badan Kerjasama Marturia (YBKS), the same partner PUNDI backed as founding sponsor in the program's first cohort in 2022. What stood out this time was not the curriculum but who was running it: the organizing committee was made up almost entirely of alumni from the first cohort — young people who, a year earlier, had been the ones nervously practicing group presentations, and were now the ones facilitating them. Across structured small-group sessions, participants worked through modules on effective communication, peer accountability, and public presentation, capped by three rounds of live field practice — real conversations, real audiences, real feedback.

PUNDI's role in this second cohort was quieter but deliberate: gifting leadership books to each of the YBKS coaching team, and staying present as a relationship partner to HKBP between cohorts — the kind of continuity that keeps a training partnership alive. This is the model PUNDI backs: not a one-time transaction, but a leadership pipeline that regenerates itself. A program PUNDI helped launch in 2022 has since become self-sustaining enough that its own graduates now lead it — while the partnership that built its curriculum, YBKS, continues as PUNDI's technical ally in youth leadership development. Building on this cohort's momentum, organizers also began laying groundwork for what would become PUNDI's ongoing digital youth outreach, Serafim Praise. It's a small case study in a larger conviction: invest once in training the trainers, and the program keeps paying forward — sometimes with resources, sometimes simply by staying in the room.