The 11th Annual SMU-Ikeda Peace and Harmony Lecture, titled “Personal Learnings from the Ground in Rural Indonesia,” took place on October 24, drawing 150 attendees to SMU’s Mochtar Riady Auditorium. Guest Speaker Ms Gouri Mirpuri, Founder of The Learning Farm (Indonesia), shared her heartfelt journey of starting and sustaining a programme that has helped break the poverty cycle for rural youth for over two decades.
This ground-up initiative outside Jakarta offers vulnerable youth, street children, and refugees a second chance in life — empowering them to escape the poverty trap by becoming smarter, more sustainable farmers than their parents.
Through her stories from the ground, Ms Mirpuri illustrated how compassion and practical learning “upstream” can help prevent deeper societal issues and create lasting impact in the lives of youth and their communities.
If you missed the inspiring lecture or wish to watch it again, you can do so via the SMU webpage here.
