Help Rebuild Fire-Ravaged Library in Indonesia
Donation protected
Last month, one of Lembata Island’s only libraries burned to the ground.
Lembata is one of the most under-resourced islands in the Nusa Tenggarra Timur region of Indonesia. The loss of the library comes as a huge hit to the organization’s community of local visionaries who have worked for years to build this library from their own salaries slapped together with percolating contributions. It is also a huge blow to the many children aged four through fifteen who visit the seaside library daily to help one another with their homework, as well as pick recreational readings off shelves of donated books.
100% of the proceeds from this funding effort will go to the non-profit in East Indonesia which built the library, Sahabat Penyu Loang. While the organization has set up their own portal for donations, linguistic barriers and banking complications limit the flow of funds coming in from people outside the country. As a PhD student conducting research in the region, I want to help, and I hope you will, too.
For more information about Sabahat Penyu Loang and the work they do in Lembata, please read on.
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Even as residents of rural Lembata demonstrate impatience at government neglect, even as the population rises and schools lack necessary materials and textbook-trained educators, the people of the island of Lembata maintain a drive to create a better future for their youth. Sahabat Penyu's Library stood as a symbol of community empowerment, as it represented a marker for how locals could mobilize their own development despite limited resources from the government.
In the few decades since Lembata earned independence from the neighboring regency of East Flores, the area has suffered economic turbulence compounded with frequent natural disasters. Floods, earthquakes, and tsunamis leave the islanders in the rebuilding stages of development rather than in the upswing of innovation. In the regions of the island not affected by landslides and tsunamis, farmers have a hard time imagining a life beyond seasonal work. Meanwhile the outside world changes faster than most can comprehend.
Now that Western notions of progress dominate the schooling curriculum, younger generations feel urgent pressure to keep up. Local infrastructure hasn’t soared much in the past decade, but residents of Lembata are exponentially aware of the resource gap between Lembata and other islands, and more starkly, between Lembata and the outside world.
Will these changes serve to inspire young minds, or to intimidate them?
Sahabat Penyu Loang's library, once rebuilt, will provide a central resource for the children of Loang, who need to witness examples of community empowerment in order to follow footsteps in creating change. If re-erected, the library will continue to set examples for literacy promotion centres across the island of Lembata, where a single bookstore has yet to grace the island's shores. Sahabat Penyu Loang started as an organization which mobilized island efforts to save the island’s endangered sea-turtle population (which includes five of the seven known species!), and to teach youth to maintain cleanliness of the island’s bio-diverse shores. Monitors scan the beaches nightly, looking for turtle nests which are then relocated to protected hatcheries, and women in the organization operate their own weaving collective to promote conservation of traditional arts for the maintenance of local identity.
See Sahabat Penyu Loang's Facebook Page
https://www.facebook.com/groups/473104199555657/
Sahabat Penyu Loang's (SAYANG) ongoing effort to save endangered sea turtles:
There are seven species of Sea Turtles in the world. Of those seven, six lay their eggs in Indonesia; five on the coasts of Lembata. Due to threats such as poaching, animal predation, and land pollution, the sea turtles face risk of extinction. In 2016, Sahabat Penyu Loang was founded by several local fisherman who recognized the beauty of these creatures who, no longer how far they traveled at sea, always came back to the same shores to lay their eggs. Since then, SAYANG'S facilitators have visited classrooms all across Lembata to promote messages of nature and turtle conservation, empowering youth to take pride and responsibility for their natural surroundings.
SAYANG's multi-part mission:
1) Support protection of sea turtles both in Indonesia and internationally
2) Maintain a library where local children can learn love for the sea and the ecosystem, as well as develop within the school system (the library is open-air, located right next to the turtle hatchery)
3) Make Lembata the center for data and research on sea turtles
4) Establish ecotourism near turtle-hatching sites as a means for sharing culture and building local industry: SAYANG’s budding ecotourism efforts have enlarged the community both within and outside Lembata of individuals who support the stabilization and growth of some of the sea’s most majestic creatures.
Contact:
Rumah SAYANG (Sahabat Penyu Loang )
Jl. Trans Nagawutung RT FAjar 02 Dusun Tubukrajan,
Desa Riabao – Loang Kecamatan Nagawutung
Kabupaten Lembata Provinsi NTT
Indonesia
Coordinator and Founder: Polikarpus Bala: +62 81338298688, email: [email redacted]
Site Director: Densianus Ado Nunang: +62 82213431751
Julie Gaynes, PhD student in UCLA's Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance: During the Summer of 2019, I received an Indonesian Studies Travel Grant for Summer 2019 to conduct my field research on spiritual landscapes in the region. In the town of Loang in the Solor Archipelago (the location of what used to be called "The Spice Islands"), a group of visionaries, Sahabat Penyu Loang, works to promote academic and cultural literacy among the village's children and youth.
Lembata is one of the most under-resourced islands in the Nusa Tenggarra Timur region of Indonesia. The loss of the library comes as a huge hit to the organization’s community of local visionaries who have worked for years to build this library from their own salaries slapped together with percolating contributions. It is also a huge blow to the many children aged four through fifteen who visit the seaside library daily to help one another with their homework, as well as pick recreational readings off shelves of donated books.
100% of the proceeds from this funding effort will go to the non-profit in East Indonesia which built the library, Sahabat Penyu Loang. While the organization has set up their own portal for donations, linguistic barriers and banking complications limit the flow of funds coming in from people outside the country. As a PhD student conducting research in the region, I want to help, and I hope you will, too.
For more information about Sabahat Penyu Loang and the work they do in Lembata, please read on.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Even as residents of rural Lembata demonstrate impatience at government neglect, even as the population rises and schools lack necessary materials and textbook-trained educators, the people of the island of Lembata maintain a drive to create a better future for their youth. Sahabat Penyu's Library stood as a symbol of community empowerment, as it represented a marker for how locals could mobilize their own development despite limited resources from the government.
In the few decades since Lembata earned independence from the neighboring regency of East Flores, the area has suffered economic turbulence compounded with frequent natural disasters. Floods, earthquakes, and tsunamis leave the islanders in the rebuilding stages of development rather than in the upswing of innovation. In the regions of the island not affected by landslides and tsunamis, farmers have a hard time imagining a life beyond seasonal work. Meanwhile the outside world changes faster than most can comprehend.
Now that Western notions of progress dominate the schooling curriculum, younger generations feel urgent pressure to keep up. Local infrastructure hasn’t soared much in the past decade, but residents of Lembata are exponentially aware of the resource gap between Lembata and other islands, and more starkly, between Lembata and the outside world.
Will these changes serve to inspire young minds, or to intimidate them?
Sahabat Penyu Loang's library, once rebuilt, will provide a central resource for the children of Loang, who need to witness examples of community empowerment in order to follow footsteps in creating change. If re-erected, the library will continue to set examples for literacy promotion centres across the island of Lembata, where a single bookstore has yet to grace the island's shores. Sahabat Penyu Loang started as an organization which mobilized island efforts to save the island’s endangered sea-turtle population (which includes five of the seven known species!), and to teach youth to maintain cleanliness of the island’s bio-diverse shores. Monitors scan the beaches nightly, looking for turtle nests which are then relocated to protected hatcheries, and women in the organization operate their own weaving collective to promote conservation of traditional arts for the maintenance of local identity.
See Sahabat Penyu Loang's Facebook Page
https://www.facebook.com/groups/473104199555657/
Sahabat Penyu Loang's (SAYANG) ongoing effort to save endangered sea turtles:
There are seven species of Sea Turtles in the world. Of those seven, six lay their eggs in Indonesia; five on the coasts of Lembata. Due to threats such as poaching, animal predation, and land pollution, the sea turtles face risk of extinction. In 2016, Sahabat Penyu Loang was founded by several local fisherman who recognized the beauty of these creatures who, no longer how far they traveled at sea, always came back to the same shores to lay their eggs. Since then, SAYANG'S facilitators have visited classrooms all across Lembata to promote messages of nature and turtle conservation, empowering youth to take pride and responsibility for their natural surroundings.
SAYANG's multi-part mission:
1) Support protection of sea turtles both in Indonesia and internationally
2) Maintain a library where local children can learn love for the sea and the ecosystem, as well as develop within the school system (the library is open-air, located right next to the turtle hatchery)
3) Make Lembata the center for data and research on sea turtles
4) Establish ecotourism near turtle-hatching sites as a means for sharing culture and building local industry: SAYANG’s budding ecotourism efforts have enlarged the community both within and outside Lembata of individuals who support the stabilization and growth of some of the sea’s most majestic creatures.
Contact:
Rumah SAYANG (Sahabat Penyu Loang )
Jl. Trans Nagawutung RT FAjar 02 Dusun Tubukrajan,
Desa Riabao – Loang Kecamatan Nagawutung
Kabupaten Lembata Provinsi NTT
Indonesia
Coordinator and Founder: Polikarpus Bala: +62 81338298688, email: [email redacted]
Site Director: Densianus Ado Nunang: +62 82213431751
Julie Gaynes, PhD student in UCLA's Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance: During the Summer of 2019, I received an Indonesian Studies Travel Grant for Summer 2019 to conduct my field research on spiritual landscapes in the region. In the town of Loang in the Solor Archipelago (the location of what used to be called "The Spice Islands"), a group of visionaries, Sahabat Penyu Loang, works to promote academic and cultural literacy among the village's children and youth.
Organizer
Julie Gaynes
Organizer
Los Angeles, CA
