Mela Sabina
Mela Sabina is a partner at Fortune Indonesia, an integrated advertising agency, and Director of COM3 in Singapore, a marketing and broadcasting firm. In spite of her busy life, she still makes time to care about others.
It was 11 years ago when Mia Hanafiah asked Mela to join Yayasan Jantung Indonesia. Mela’s mother had a heart problem, so the Sorbonne University graduate felt it was a good idea to learn everything she could about cardiovascular disease. Mela is now the Head of Communications at YJI.
“YJI is 40 years old, and we want to reach a younger audience,” says Mela of her role with the foundation. “So we are challenged to find new mediums and ways for our message to be well received by the millennials. To achieve this, we must make ourselves more approachable, obliging and relatable to the younger generation. That’s why the foundation needs to have a new look, a new feel and a new approach to communicate our vocation, mission and vision to society.” She adds, “And this surely applies to all our programs and campaigns, including our global social initiative Go Red for Women, which aims to raise awareness of heart disease in women.”
“My field is promotion. We communicate through the media, we go to schools and offices to spread the word. We teach CPR, we give talk shows. We participated in the Asian Games and Para Games, setting up a booth to give out information on how to prevent heart disease and even giving out free medical checkups to the international media and visitors. This is our big milestone, as we are the first and only foundation ever, in the history of both games, to participate in giving such support.”
“What do we tell people about preventing heart disease? Start with healthy eating and exercise. Don’t smoke. Undertake regular medical checkups. Avoid stress. There’s no minimal age to check your heart. Sadly, there are more young people having heart attacks nowadays.”