Empatiku Foundation - International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN)

Country - Indonesia

Website

Empatiku - International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN)

Empatiku is a civil society organization based in Indonesia that fosters empathy in the security and education sectors and addresses the rise of violent extremism. Since its establishment in 2015, Empatiku has innovated its programs to ensure the involvement of civil society, especially women, in bringing about social change.

The programs include a Community-Based Early Warning and Early Response System to violent extremism, Social Reintegration, the “I’m Resilient Movement”, Empathy Education, and Research and Policy Development. The organization works with the belief that with skilled empathy and emotional intelligence, everyone has the ability and resources to solve social problems and become change-makers.

Partnering with more than 15,000 community members, policymakers, women, and other stakeholders, Empatiku is on a mission to mainstream empathy as a value and practice in everyday life. Empatiku has partnered with ICAN, including featuring Empatiku’s work in Invisible Women in 2019. Empatiku joined ICAN and CIASE’s Secure, Here, and Now international pilot project in 2024 to ensure women peacebuilders’ self-security.

Empatiku also joined the She Builds Peace campaign in 2023 and 2025.

Core Areas of Work:

Community resilience
Peace education
Preventing and countering violent extremism
Rehabilitation and reintegration
Research and policy advocacy

We are the women, and we don’t want women to become victims or be recruited and later on engage in violent organizations. We work to ensure women understand that they have potential, and that they have opportunities to actively engage, and we want to make sure policies and regulations give women an important role in building peace.

– Mira Kusumarini Founder, Empatiku

Stories & Features

Bridging Communities: How Women Peacebuilders Promote Peace and Resilience to Prevent Violent Extremism

ICAN facilitated a four-day peer-to-peer learning exchange in Indonesia between WASL members Empatiku and Odessa Organization for Women’s Development, from Mosul, Iraq.

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Read Post Bridging Communities: How Women Peacebuilders Promote Peace and Resilience to Prevent Violent Extremism

Our Strategies, Our Peace: Women Peacebuilders in their Own Words

About the project ICAN’s documentation initiative seeks to showcase women peacebuilders’ strategies through a series of autoethnographies, culminating in a published, edited volume. Building on our Recognizing Women Peacebuilders Framework, these autoethnographies will emphasize the ways in which women peacebuilders blend different sources of power and leverage to shape their work. For too long, the […]

Read Post Our Strategies, Our Peace: Women Peacebuilders in their Own Words

How Women Peacebuilders Respond to Early Warning Signs of Extremisms

Communities are a powerful force for pre-empting and preventing extremisms, provided they are equipped to intervene to ensure that community members do not become trapped in the process of radicalization. In the WASL community check-in call on March 16, 2023, WASL member Mira Kusumarini of Empatiku, a peacebuilding organization based in Indonesia, presented a new guidebook to build the capacity of communities to do just that, entitled Identifying Early Warning Signs: A Guidebook for Building Community Resilience to Violent Extremism.

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Read Post How Women Peacebuilders Respond to Early Warning Signs of Extremisms

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