Jian Nova ( She / Her)
CODE Strategies Project Focal Point
GWL-INA (Gaya Warna Lentera Indonesia Network)
Indonesia
Jian is the CODE Strategies Program Officer- Indoensia, and Communication and media Officer at GWL-INA, Indonesia’s national network of community-based organisations working on HIV, health and human rights for gay men, bisexual men,other MSM transgender women. Jian has driven both the TestJKT digital campaign and the pioneering pilot of the KeyPop Mobile App for community-led monitoring of LGBTQI+ rights.
What do you enjoy most about what you do?
“What I enjoy most about my role as Program Officer on the CODE Strategy project is the opportunity it gives us to open new pathways of access for our community. Community-Led Monitoring (CLM) is already a well-established approach in Indonesia, but introducing a new dimension through a mobile application has allowed us to offer more diverse and accessible options for our community members, who themselves represent such a wide range of needs and backgrounds.”What do you find most difficult about what you do?
“One of the biggest challenges we’ve faced is the limited time we have to work with, combined with the fairly long application release process. Adapting the platform to Indonesia’s specific context has also been a real challenge — though one we’ve been able to work through. Indonesia’s cultural and legal landscape differs quite significantly from our neighboring countries in Asia, and navigating those differences took a considerable amount of time and effort.That said, beyond these challenges, our CLM Rights initiative — as we call it in Indonesia — has been successfully piloted. Through this process, we’ve been able to surface community stories and turn them into shared advocacy documents that serve a dual purpose: improving health service delivery, and advancing the fulfillment of human rights for vulnerable communities across Indonesia.”
As a Communications graduate, I have always believed in the power of strategic messaging to drive meaningful social change. Since 2021, I have dedicated my career to serving as a Communication Expert in the field of HIV advocacy. Throughout this journey, one of my proudest achievements has been successfully bridging grassroots realities with national agendas. I am deeply honored to have built strategic collaborations with key state institutions, working directly alongside the Ministry of Health, the National Commission on Violence Against Women (Komnas Perempuan), and other National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) to ensure our advocacy reaches the highest levels of decision-making.
However, this path is not without its significant hurdles. I constantly navigate deep-rooted structural challenges within the country, particularly the systemic barriers that make it incredibly difficult for individuals with diverse sexual orientations and gender identities to participate safely and authentically in national dialogues. Furthermore, persistent funding gaps remain a primary obstacle that our movement faces in sustaining and expanding our impactful work.
Despite these systemic and financial barriers, my motivation never wavers. What truly keeps me going is the community itself. I realize that there are still so many marginalized groups at the grassroots level who desperately need strong, national-level ideas and advocacy to support and amplify their voices.
Looking ahead to 2030, my ultimate goal is clear: I am fully committed to contributing to the global target of ending AIDS. But beyond that, I envision and actively fight for an Indonesia where every single citizen, without exception, is guaranteed equal rights and opportunities—ensuring they are treated with fairness and dignity in the eyes of the state, the law, and the healthcare system.
At GWL-INA, Jian has worked across both components of the CODE Strategies project — digital demand generation for HIV services and community-led monitoring (CLM) of human rights.
Key contributions include:
- Turning data into advocacy: developing an advocacy document from analysed KeyPop App data and presenting findings on human rights violations to Indonesia’s National Human Rights Institution.
- Developing the TestJKT campaign, including focus group discussions with MSM, trans women, outreach workers and LGBTIQ+ individuals to refine audience segmentation, recruiting designers and influencers, and prototyping an online reservation dashboard for HIV services.
- Leading Indonesia’s baseline assessment of the LGBTQI+ human rights situation and HIV service access.
- Making Indonesia the most advanced pilot country for the KeyPop Mobile App: contextualising the tool into Bahasa Indonesia, and piloting data collection across five cities — Bogor, Palu, Padang, Medan and Malang — capturing 54 data entries on human rights violations and service access barriers.
About the project
About the organisation behind the project
