Update from the two students!
Door: Bob & Felix
Blijf op de hoogte en volg jet
14 November 2012 | Indonesië, Mataram
Dear all,
A lot has been happening since the last email/newsletter on the small beautiful island in the southwest of Lombok. After exploring the island and getting to know the inhabitants we organized a meeting to get to know the head of the island and the heads of the villages and other important stakeholders for the plastic project.
In this first meeting we have introduced ourselves and our ambition to help to clean Gili Gede by telling about the results of our action research and the interviews we had in Mataram concerning the plastic recycling of certain materials/kinds of plastic. Furthermore, meetings have been held on a regularly base to keep all stakeholders informed and to get ideas about their view on what to do with the plastic and how to deal with it in a united way to keep Gili Gede clean.
The educational campaign in the school has been a success and the children learned a lot about the effects of plastic in the environment and especially the closely related health aspect for their own. Moreover the relation to tourism and elements of economics have been introduced to highlight the complete picture from every side. We found out that there is somebody from the mainland coming to Gili Gede every fortnight to buy all valuable plastics of the villagers. This created the idea to inform every village about this and to ask if the individual villages would like to create a own plastic infrastructure or to unite with this buyer from the mainland. The result has been that the villages would like to sell to the buyer.
We brainstormed to find a way in which the plastic which can't be sold can be still collected so we created a cleaning up competition in the villages. On the morning of the last day of the 'clean up week', we went around the island to weigh all the collected waste and register who collected it. At the end of the day we organized an award ceremony in which 3 people who collected the most in their own village were given a price. The prices included footballs, sarungs, traveling bags and other clothing. We thank Tiny and Richard for sponsoring a part of these prices! In total an impressive amount of 600kg of plastic have been collected on the island. Some individuals collected amounts up to 120kg and were clearly the winner.
We want to give/organize workshops with some ladies of the villages who are already identified to create products out of the "useless - invaluable" plastic which has been collected. We see them as the future garbage-ladies. For this workshop, we researched and found an organization on Jakarta which might be able to help us. For the rest of the plastic waste, the heads of the villages decided to burn it, so we promised that we will build a simple system in which the plastic can be burned on a elevated level in each village to not burn the waste individually in front of the houses and diminish as much of the burden of smell and toxics.
Other than that, another stakeholder has introduced himself for the plastic project, his name is Ray and he comes from Australia. Ray is planning to build a marina for sailing boats in front of the secret island resort and he is very much interested in continuing the educational program as well as sponsoring big rubbish bins or other storage facilities for the villages to have also central collection points on top of the karungs/plastic rice bags on individual level. This is great news.
Our next step is to organize the next competition which will be named: Gili Gede's cleanest village. We already purchased 5 trophees and tags ranking from 1st-5th place. The heads of the villages are motivating the inhabitants as well as we do to become the cleanest village and for sure take the honor. The idea is to rank the cleanest village on a regular base in order to keep the motivation high. Through this we are hoping that especially the plastic which is washed on from the ocean to the beach will be collected regularly.
We have seen a lot of progress already in the relative short time we are here and we see great opportunities to get and keep Gili Gede clean with thanks to the motivation among the islanders, the people from the different resorts, the encouraging messages we receive from friends and family, and of course with thanks to all the people who made the first steps of this project financially possible. Thank you all, and we will get back to you soon!
The cleanest regards,
Bob & Felix
A lot has been happening since the last email/newsletter on the small beautiful island in the southwest of Lombok. After exploring the island and getting to know the inhabitants we organized a meeting to get to know the head of the island and the heads of the villages and other important stakeholders for the plastic project.
In this first meeting we have introduced ourselves and our ambition to help to clean Gili Gede by telling about the results of our action research and the interviews we had in Mataram concerning the plastic recycling of certain materials/kinds of plastic. Furthermore, meetings have been held on a regularly base to keep all stakeholders informed and to get ideas about their view on what to do with the plastic and how to deal with it in a united way to keep Gili Gede clean.
The educational campaign in the school has been a success and the children learned a lot about the effects of plastic in the environment and especially the closely related health aspect for their own. Moreover the relation to tourism and elements of economics have been introduced to highlight the complete picture from every side. We found out that there is somebody from the mainland coming to Gili Gede every fortnight to buy all valuable plastics of the villagers. This created the idea to inform every village about this and to ask if the individual villages would like to create a own plastic infrastructure or to unite with this buyer from the mainland. The result has been that the villages would like to sell to the buyer.
We brainstormed to find a way in which the plastic which can't be sold can be still collected so we created a cleaning up competition in the villages. On the morning of the last day of the 'clean up week', we went around the island to weigh all the collected waste and register who collected it. At the end of the day we organized an award ceremony in which 3 people who collected the most in their own village were given a price. The prices included footballs, sarungs, traveling bags and other clothing. We thank Tiny and Richard for sponsoring a part of these prices! In total an impressive amount of 600kg of plastic have been collected on the island. Some individuals collected amounts up to 120kg and were clearly the winner.
We want to give/organize workshops with some ladies of the villages who are already identified to create products out of the "useless - invaluable" plastic which has been collected. We see them as the future garbage-ladies. For this workshop, we researched and found an organization on Jakarta which might be able to help us. For the rest of the plastic waste, the heads of the villages decided to burn it, so we promised that we will build a simple system in which the plastic can be burned on a elevated level in each village to not burn the waste individually in front of the houses and diminish as much of the burden of smell and toxics.
Other than that, another stakeholder has introduced himself for the plastic project, his name is Ray and he comes from Australia. Ray is planning to build a marina for sailing boats in front of the secret island resort and he is very much interested in continuing the educational program as well as sponsoring big rubbish bins or other storage facilities for the villages to have also central collection points on top of the karungs/plastic rice bags on individual level. This is great news.
Our next step is to organize the next competition which will be named: Gili Gede's cleanest village. We already purchased 5 trophees and tags ranking from 1st-5th place. The heads of the villages are motivating the inhabitants as well as we do to become the cleanest village and for sure take the honor. The idea is to rank the cleanest village on a regular base in order to keep the motivation high. Through this we are hoping that especially the plastic which is washed on from the ocean to the beach will be collected regularly.
We have seen a lot of progress already in the relative short time we are here and we see great opportunities to get and keep Gili Gede clean with thanks to the motivation among the islanders, the people from the different resorts, the encouraging messages we receive from friends and family, and of course with thanks to all the people who made the first steps of this project financially possible. Thank you all, and we will get back to you soon!
The cleanest regards,
Bob & Felix
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