EA Indonesia First Retreat: Lessons from Jakarta

By YudhistiraGowo @ 2025-06-08T12:25 (+29)

Summary

EA Indonesia held our first retreat from April 11-13, 2025, with 22 participants across varying levels of EA familiarity. The retreat created deeper community connections, exposed newcomers to EA ideas, and provided a ground for collaborations. Nonetheless, there were several areas where future improvements could be made, such as in participant selection, scheduling, and activity facilitation. This post outlines our community context, participant demographics, logistical and event design, successes, and key learnings. We hope it will be a helpful reference for other emerging EA communities who are considering holding similar events.

Context and Goals

Indonesia's EA community has grown substantially over the past two years, evolving from a handful of interested individuals to a network of over 90 members across Jakarta, Bandung, and other major cities. In 2024 EA Indonesia established an Organizing Committee (OC) and hired a 0.5 FTE Lead Community Builder (LCB), funded by Meta Charity Funders (MCF). However, our interactions had been largely confined to monthly virtual seminars and two hour in-person meetups that, while valuable for knowledge transfer, left little room for the deeper conversations and relationship-building that strong communities require.

In 2025, the OC decided to hold a retreat with the LCB will lead and recruit volunteers to support the running of the event. Our primary objectives for the retreat were to deepen EA understanding among our community members, create networking opportunities beyond our usual formats, open up possibilities for discussions that last longer than our usual monthly discussions, explore concrete collaboration opportunities, and test retreat formats for future iterations. We also hoped to better understand the dynamics of our community—who was most engaged, what topics generated the most interest, and what barriers prevented deeper involvement.

Funding

We received funding through CEA’s Group Support Funds. They offered us $48 per attendee for a maximum of 20 attendees, which was adjusted for our country’s cost of living. While CEA's Group Support Funds provided our primary funding, we also implemented a Rp50,000 participation fee for all attendees, with volunteers exempt. This served dual purposes: contributing modest additional revenue and, more importantly, creating participant investment through financial commitment. The fee functioned as a screening mechanism for genuine interest while reducing no-show rates. At approximately $3, the amount was accessible to our target participants while still creating psychological buy-in.

Participant Demographics

Our 22 participants included 5 members with minimal EA knowledge, 8 somewhat familiar with EA concepts, and 9 very familiar with EA ideas. Notable attendees included one participant from Sri Lanka (our previous community builder), one CEA representative, and one university chapter member.

Programming Structure

Our events started on a Friday night and ended on Sunday evening. Our activity mix included career planning workshops, cause prioritization exercises, "Updates in EA" sessions, lightning talks, structured 1:1 conversations, and a discussion on the future of EA Indonesia. We also introduced a "Topic Wall"—a self-organized discussion system where participants posted topics and names, allowing other attendees to initiate conversations on subjects of mutual interest. You can see our retreat agenda here: Retreat Agenda

The Topic Wall showed promise but needs refinement. Participants wrote their names and discussion topics on sticky notes and then others could grab a note and initiate discussions during breaks or designated social periods. While some excellent conversations emerged from this system, many participants found it unclear how to engage with the wall or when discussions were supposed to happen, and we haven’t prepared an adequate surface to stick the sticky notes and they fell off the wall during the event. Better communication protocols or digital capture methods could increase its value significantly.

The "Updates in EA" session, run by our most senior members of the community, proved particularly valuable. While some members may have a lot of involvement with the Indonesian EA community, most of the participants are not involved with the greater EA community and therefore are not up to speed with the larger network of organizations, cause areas, and news in EA.

Lightning talks give a chance for our community members to share anything that they are interested in to spark discussions within the community. Each participant could volunteer for a short presentation on any EA-adjacent topic that they were passionate about. Topics discussed included how the Indonesian government implements their latest plans, inequality through genes, Visakanv’s Slingshot Theory, an AMA about working on economic development and policy at the World Bank, and an intro to forecasting session. The session was voluntary and therefore not many participants presented, however we hope that we can find a way to encourage more participation in the future. 

Due to each attendee's schedule, only half of our participants joined on Friday night, while the other half joined us on Saturday morning. As the event was held in the city a few people chose to commute in and not stay at the retreat location, and we had one attendee who had to leave before the event ended due to personal reasons. 

Our event structure changed a few times before the day of the event as we realized that we tried to cram too many activities in our schedule. We then realized that we have not provided adequate time in between events to accommodate transition periods and give people time to take a breather and relax in between activities, which required us to cancel a few events on the fly to accommodate. This ended up being the right call, as it kept the energy high during the entire event period.

Venue and Logistics

We selected The PodKost in Central Jakarta—a hostel-style venue with flexible spaces that surpassed our expectations. The facility offered 16 rooms with 4-8 beds each, plus kitchen facilities, common areas, an activities space with whiteboards, and a rooftop area. We also got two floors exclusively for ourselves, providing us a more secure environment. Located just a 10-minute walk from Jakarta Kota station, it enabled easy commuting for participants who chose not to stay overnight. 

The venue's layout facilitated both structured activities and informal conversations. The upstairs activities room, with its floor mats and moveable furniture, proved perfect for workshops and group discussions, while the common areas near the kitchen allowed for spontaneous conversations over meals. 

We catered a local vegan restaurant that provided good quality vegan meals at $2.22 per meal. We served vegan food four times for lunch and dinner. The quality exceeded expectations, with several participants specifically commenting on how the food exceeded their assumptions about vegan food and availability, though individual packaging created unnecessary waste which we hope to address in the future. For breakfast, we provided a pantry with staples including bread, jam, granola, coffee, tea, oatmeal, oatmilk, and kuaci, as well as additional snacks from local markets. In total we spent just shy of $11 per person across the event, for a total of $241. 

What Worked Well

Participant feedback highlighted several successes. The retreat format successfully created the deeper engagement we sought, with visible increases in participant energy and motivation that persisted well beyond the weekend itself. A few notable inputs we have from our feedback survey includes:

• "Forming deeper connections with EAID members, both new and old, in a way that is not possible during shorter monthly meetups and virtual seminars."
• "I definitely placed myself in an unfamiliar situation, but it turned out to be a great experience... this activity successfully brought together intellectually curious individuals with open minds."

Logistically, the event ran smoothly despite being our first attempt at a retreat. While there were difficulties at the beginning of the planning process trying to manage the many different things that needed to be prepared, on the day the volunteer team's coordination was excellent, and we had no significant operational issues. 

The informal conversations that happened naturally throughout the weekend may have been as valuable as the structured programming. Meal times, breaks, and evening gatherings created opportunities for deep discussions that participants described as transformative. 

Key Areas for Improvement

1. Participant Pre-Selection

Several experienced participants noted frustration with having to explain basic EA concepts repeatedly. Future iterations should consider requiring minimum EA knowledge prerequisites, creating separate tracks for different experience levels, or providing substantial pre-reading requirements to establish baseline understanding.

2. Schedule Optimization

Starting activities at 10 AM felt too late for many participants. Earlier starts could create more chances for participants to get more out of their participation, as well as lower the amount of unused precious time we have in the venue. 

3. Facilitator Preparation

Some participants noted that certain sessions suffered from under-prepared facilitators. Future events should include facilitator rehearsals, clear preparation guidelines, and backup facilitation support to ensure consistent quality across all sessions.

4. Clearer Direction During Planning

To avoid the kind of difficulties that happened early in the planning process as there were too many things to prepare for the main organizer, organizer should create a structured work plan and create clear work that can be delegated to volunteers to distribute responsibility. 

5. Regular Check-in

Organizers should reach out and keep in touch with the CEA events team regularly to get a second view on the event. One of the most useful things that happened during the preparation of the retreat was a regular call between the organizer and Dion Tan from CEA to keep us focused on what is important and give reassurance when things were uncertain.

6. Activity Documentation

Valuable discussions weren't systematically captured, limiting follow-up actions. Better recording systems (written summaries, action items, connection tracking) could extend impact beyond the event itself.

Closing Remarks

Thanks to all participants, volunteers, and CEA's Group Support Fund for making this possible. Special appreciation to Doli, Al, Jasmine, Faqih, and Jack who volunteered to make the event possible.

We would love to hear from retreat attendees to share about their own experiences, and are happy to answer questions from readers planning similar events in the comments below.

P.S. One of our members also wrote their experience which they shared with the community, which you can see here: Interesting Discussions I Had in EA ID April Retreat