YDTI is a non-governmental organization founded by Kerstin Beise that started out in 2016 as a representative office of a Netherlands-based consultancy cooperative called Dare This. In 2020, Kerstin and her local partners established an independent Indonesia-based entity under the name Yayasan Dedikasi Tjipta Indonesia (Dare This Indonesia Foundation).
Trained as a physiotherapist, Kerstin worked for the non-governmental organization NLR for 14 years before starting YDTI. During her time at NLR, she collaborated on many projects and activities with the people’s organization PerMaTa, and especially with PerMaTa South Sulawesi. As she was starting her own organization, she spoke with PerMaTa South Sulawesi leaders about how they could work together. In Kerstin’s words, “There was a strong desire and commitment from both sides to strengthen the work of DPOs [disabled people’s organizations] on leprosy in Sulawesi, especially as attention to the needs of people affected by leprosy has decreased in recent years and the leprosy control program and international support organizations increasingly focused on other important measures such as chemoprophylaxis. We saw that we could complement each other very well: with Pak Al Kadri and Yuli [of PerMaTa] we have persons affected by leprosy as actors who have many years of experience in peer support and advocacy, while YDTI brings in capacity in the areas of proposal writing and project management.”
