Dissa Syakina Ahdanisa

Inspired by a volunteering trip to Latin America where she dined at a café staffed entirely by deaf individuals, Dissa Ahdanisa founded Fingertalk Enterprise to connect the hearing and deaf people in her home country of Indonesia and reduce the unemployment rate of the country’s deaf youth. After learning sign language, Dissa recruited a team of both deaf and hearing individuals to launch the Fingertalk Café, a cosy, comfortable space where everyone in the community can connect and share a meal—regardless of how they communicate. Seeing the success of the café, Dissa and her team expanded their social enterprise to include a handicrafts market and car wash, each providing meaningful jobs to unemployed deaf youth. Through Fingertalk, local business owners are beginning to shift their perspectives on what deaf individuals can do.