Supervisor: Ms Sam Shu Qin
What is your team’s project about?
For our IEx project, we collaborated with the coastal community of Desa Budeng in Jembrana, Bali. This village is home to a rich mangrove forest, providing an abundance of natural resources. Through SeaCommunities, we connected with the local community to explore partnership opportunities. Our project focuses on mangrove conservation by repurposing mangrove plant scraps into profitable, usable products. Working closely with Desa Budeng, we source ground propagules—created by cutting, drying, and grinding propagules harvested from propagated mangrove trees—and use propagule extract to produce mangrove jelly.
What does your team enjoy most about the IEx project?
Travelling to Bali is already an amazing and precious opportunity in itself, but what made our experience truly special was meeting various stakeholders and engaging with Balinese locals. We enjoyed hearing their thoughts on everything from coffee preferences and Balinese café culture to their direct feedback on our project. During our visits to Desa Budeng, the community welcomed us with immense generosity and hospitality. We enjoyed the food villagers at Desa Budeng prepared for us, the local cuisine that delighted both our hearts and taste buds. . Beyond the project, this journey allowed us to bond as a team, experiencing all the highs and lows together – from translation errors to hotel breakfasts to catching crabs, we cherished the time spent together and had loads of fun!
What are some challenges that you think are unique to the project?
Our project involves developing a food product, which presented several unique and unexpected challenges. One significant challenge is related to the local food handling practices in Desa Budeng. This became more complicated when we realised that the regulatory framework for food safety in Indonesia can differ substantially from Singapore. This resulted in the need to balance between the regulations and unwritten traditional practices. Nevertheless, we found tremendous value in the experience. It offered a learning opportunity to appreciate the more authentic, family-oriented approach to food production. Moreover, we discovered the importance of developing context-appropriate solutions to such unique challenges. Another challenge we didn’t anticipate was also aligning the community's expectations with the timelines of our project and our capabilities as university students. This, coupled with the geographical differences, created some pressure on our group. However, this experience really taught us the importance of establishing clear expectations and setting realistic goals early in the process while remaining sensitive to the community's hopes and concerns.
Any specific tips about working with your team’s community?
When travelling around Bali, do be careful not to accidentally step on the Balinese offerings that you may see on the grounds of the streets, temples and shrines. Some shops place them right outside, near the door, so do be mindful of where you walk! Bali is quite warm but it might be advisable to still dress more modestly as a form of respect, especially since you would be meeting different Balinese communities or participating in some cultural activities, like visiting religious sites. It’s also encouraged to be warm and friendly, like the Balinese folks are! More specific to the Wana Mertha community, the hygiene standard in the village is different from what we’re used to in city/town areas. Would be good to keep that in mind and be humble and receptive as we are still just visitors who come to learn more from them, as much as we also come to collaborate and support them!
Any fun stories to share with your juniors?
We spent a whole semester making mangrove jelly in the Saga buttery almost every week, usually at night and sometimes even till the early AM. Though it was a commitment that we had to make space for in our busy schedules, I feel that the time we spent together creating and experimenting actually brought us together as a group and it was fun when we would take turns in the ‘cooking’ process and we were all fully present without the use of our phones. I’m quite thankful that the people in our IEx group like to make jokes, so even miniscule things like taking hot water, straining the mangrove solution and capping the jelly containers could become something that we could still smile and laugh about. In our 2nd trip to Bali, it was especially fun as part of our market research involved some group mates going to different cafes to observe and quite literally get a taste of what the Balinese palette might be like. Ended up being quite sweet and we were highly caffeinated by the end of the day, but that also led to us remaining energetic at night and playing games together at night after finishing our ‘To-Do’s for the day. It was also particularly enjoyable when we visited the village again and they greeted us very warmly, not only being super engaged and curious when we showed them how we made jelly from their mangrove powder, but also reciprocated the exchange of knowledge by showing us how they make batik from scratch! Though we were also busy filming everything for documentation purposes and our creative project, that was fun too as it felt like we were all creating something noteworthy and novel – I believe that our collaborative project is the first to produce mangrove jelly, the villagers and our iex group were all keen and excited about it together.