Supervisor: Ms Chang Yueh Siang
What is your team’s project about?
We have chosen the community of Cigondewah, which is a village an hour away from Bandung city in Indonesia. The village used to be focused on rice farming, then focused on textile production, but now due to industrialisation, they are mainly working in plastic recycling factories. These factories have caused major pollution in the village, and the people are fighting against this in their own way. We worked with Imah Budaya, a community centre founded by Indonesian artist Tisna Sanjaya, where they provide a place for many events like art workshops, kindergarten sessions and more. On our recce trip, we spoke to many people to hear their stories and concerns. While many people were doing their own part to fight the direction that the village was going in, they were very concerned about their traditions being lost and the future of their children and their education. Seeing this, we decided to create children's storybooks based on folktales to help preserve their culture and help them educate their children. We also created a cultural map to keep records of these individuals and their remarkable efforts, to be added on to by the community.
What does your team enjoy most about the IEx project?
We loved making international friends who are from such different backgrounds, and some of these friendships have lasted past these 2 years.
What are some challenges that you think are unique to the project?
One challenge was the language barrier, as many of the people we worked with only spoke Bahasa Indonesia/very little English, but we hired translators to get around that. We also had to plan our workshops virtually, which was difficult because of lag in communication, which made it hard to keep up the momentum while planning.
Any specific tips about working with your team’s community?
Our community partner can be very polite to voice out their own opinions, so as to not be perceived as rude or insensitive, so we advise our juniors to take note whether they are actually comfortable with the decisions made during meetings and to be very clear about your openness to their feedback.
Any fun stories to share with your juniors?
There was once a snake that came to visit on one of our workshop days that completely distracted all the children (and us as well) but no harm was done to us or the snake.