Starting her career as TV presenter and model, Indonesian-Australian beauty Nadya Hutagalung has proven her eloquence not only in words, but in action as well. We met her in Bali and spent an evening talking about humanity.
Nadya has been involved in critical environmental issues for more than 20 years. It all started with a glimpse of total difference she witnessed in nature within a year. “23 years ago I took a trip to the ocean after getting my Diving License. Everything was beautiful right then with all the fish and corals”, she recalls. However, all the beauty was gone in only a year due to ocean-bombing. Since then, the Earth Hour’s Global Ambassador started campaigning for the alpha and omega of living: the environment.
After many years of environmental campaign, it is unfortunate for Nadya to have to step back from her activity with Let Elephants Be Elephants (LEBE). The international movement to ensure the longevity of elephants has given support in form of first aid infrastructure for elephants and other endangered species, as well as performing secondhand campaign through communities and influential people.
Following that, Nadya focuses more on speaking in conferences and engagements around the world. In these occasions, she mostly speaks about humanity. “We can talk about environmental and ecological issues, but in the end, it gets back to the people,” she admits.
Nadya would like to encourage people to be open about the stories of people in the world, saying, “It’s time to stop saying ‘you and I’, and replace it as ‘we’. We need to think we are one, without putting identity labels on ourselves, like our origin, race, sex, or religion that draws the line between one another. Thus, we are able to bring actual change to the world and to species as well.”
“We have conservationists, scientists, and environmentalists sitting together in a room talking about this kind of issue. As long as we only talk among ourselves, nothing will happen,” she explains the urgency of empathic listening. By the time people think as one, understanding the issues empathically and taking them as own business, that’s when we can actually make a change.
FASHION DIRECTOR Rut Caroline
PHOTOS Claus Schmidt
MAKE-UP Mila
Read the full story on our January 2018 Issue, available in your nearest bookstores.
