With assistance from a senior AusAID volunteer – Kym Hall - YUM is currently developing its 5,000 m2 of farming land at the Cipanas YUM Village (CYV). YUM is exploiting this land into an ongoing, sustainable, income generating Organic Farm enterprise and training facility.
After 30 years of running activities for orphans and children from very poor families, CYV is now expanding its activities and services to reach many more community members, and in the process explore ways to help alleviate poverty through education and training.
The majority of people living in surround ing communities are poor farmers who have a limited range of skills to seek employment opportunities. Knowing this, YUM has designed and is currently developing a viable Organic Farm and Permaculture Training Facility that, we hope, will in future be able to address health and nutrition knowledge, as well as economically efficient farming practices and environmental awareness.
YUM is currently focused on developing the farm from its present state in order to raise production by increasing efficiency. Once this has been achieved, the farm will serve as a demonstration site and teaching facility where certified training courses in Permaculture/Organic Farming will be offered to farmers and home gardeners.
As part of YUM’s long term plans, it is hoped this organic farm can be developed into an ‘Eco Tourism’ enterprise! This social enterprise will offer guided tours, as well as ‘Bed and Breakfast’ facilities to the many tourists who come to the Cipanas area from Jakarta every week-end and are looking for family activities.
Additionally, investment made towards this project will in turn help YUM to run the many other Community Development activities of the Village, and contribute to the continuance of the Village’s activities!
Through AusAid volunteering program, the Australian Youth Ambassadors for Development (AYAD) program, YUM has yet again received the assistance of two eager and talented volunteers: Xavier Brennan and Bianca Baldissera, to help with YUM’s Agricultural project designed to improve the nutritional and economic situation of the local population, as well as to reverse the current deterioration of soil quality in the Bukit Batu sub-district.
All work of this project is currently centred on the establishment of a Rural Centre, which acts as a research station for measurement and assessment of organic farming practices. This centre will be used to demonstrate various organic farming techniques to the local community that can be utilised in their home gardens. Ultimately, this centre will serve as a meeting place for participants from different villages to be able to share and exchange information that will foster mutual cooperation and capacity building.
Xavier Brennan, serving as YUM’s Agricultural Scientist, has to date been conducting field work on the Rural Centre for 6 months. Together with his local counterparts, two of YUM’s local staff: Pak Joko and Pak Yudi, mutual exchange of both traditional and modern agricultural knowledge has takes place.
Bianca Baldissera, an Environmental Scientist, having only joined the team two months ago is well into her role, focusing her efforts on researching potential organic farming techniques and planning implementation, monitor and document procedures for setting up individual projects.
Despite the Rural Centre still being in its infancy, with the combined effort of the team, significant work has been accomplish and is well underway, including: trialling various soil conditioning techniques such as composting, making bio char, worm farming, crop rotation and planning the home garden trial for the residence at the farm.
Furthermore, YUM’s Agricultural team has recently welcomed an additional member! In mid November, Michael Bragg, an Australian volunteering from the Volunteering for International Development from Australia (VIDA) program has landed safely in Central Kalimantan to start his 18 months volunteering work as YUM’s Sustainable Agricultural Development Officer. Michael will work along side Xavier, Bianca and the rest of the local staff. However, he will focus his work on establishing a demonstration site that will be easily managed by future managers & local staff and that can be replicated by local farmers who desire to be economically productive and organically sustainable.
I am an Australian volunteer with Volunteering for International Development from Australia (VIDA), and I have had the very good fortune to work with the team at YUM’s Cipanas Project for the past six months.
My twelve month placement in Indonesia involved two six month assignments; the first in Banda Aceh, North Sumatra and the second in Cipanas, West Java, where I took up the position of Organic Farm Adviser.
My first task at the Cipanas YUM farm was to develop an understanding of the farm, its personnel and to an extent the community it served. I was fortunate that the farm was managed by Oleh, a very competent 26 year old with a degree in horticulture, one year’s work experience in Japan and who had previously worked in a fruit tree nursery. Important as these achievements were his most significant and indispensable quality was his natural leadership skills.
The next stage of my task was to understand and de velop a shared view of the farm’s priorities and approaches. After discussing with Oleh, we resolved to spend the first hour and a half of each day with all farm staff, regardless of their role or duties, working together on just one project. Our objective was to give our staff group and ourselves a clear focus, a shared sense of purpose and hopefully, accomplishment.
By working together on a particular project, I was able to easily explain why certain things did not work or failed, providing the opportunity for us to discuss the changes needed to make improvements. Through “trial and error” and practical demonstrations, it was easier for the farm staff to adopt the new and improved methods as they could see the benefits first hand. Training others in these methods generated a sense of pride and ownership that will endure.
One example of this is that by working together, I could easily explain why the compost they had been producing was inferior and it gave us the opportunity to discuss the changes needed improve the composting process. Fortunately we had access to the Permaculture Resource Book by IDEP Foundation in Bali which is written in Indonesian. It helped everyone understand the theory of what our group was trying to do before we commenced a practical field demonstration.
In September 2010, the Cipanas YUM Organic Farm project received funding support from Susila Dharma Britain, enabling YUM Cipanas to continue to expand the farm, which remains a priority. With this funding, work has focused on developing an Irrigation system and the renovation of a building that will serve as a secure storage and undercover Work Area. Once the farm has developed and expanded to its maximum capacity, YUM hopes to continue working on the next phase of the project: Organic Farm Training Centre.
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As an Organic Farm Training Centre, the farm will offer communities and fellow farmers a range of non-horticulture subjects, as well as a suite of Permaculture and organic farming subjects once key farm staff have undertaken Permaculture Certificate courses with the IDEP Foundation in Bali.
Recently, the Jakarta expat community has shown great interest in the organic vegetables produced at the Cipanas YUM Village, and YUM has been provided with a stand at the bi-monthy Farmers’ Market organized by the Jakarta International School. Furthermore, a resort in Cipanas has also expressed interest in our organic vegetables. For the sustainability of the farm, these are certainly great news!
For me as a volunteer, it doesn’t get much better than this. Admittedly I am an optimist but when I stop and recall that all of this grew out of our need to get an Advisor, a Manager and a staff group all on to the ‘same page’ and how two organizations came together as a result and all over something as basic as COMPOST, then I think that there is cause for optimism and hope.
Contributed by:
Roger K Hall (Kym)
Volunteering for International Development from Australia (VIDA)
Organic Farm Adviser at Yayasan Usaha Mulia (YUM) Cipanas
West Java
VIDA assignment: May 2010 to October 2010
The signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between YUM and BIOTROP, the Southeast Asia Regional Center for Tropical Biology, marked the beginning of what hopes to be a long and fruitful partnership. For the two parties, both deeply involved in Central Kalimantan and West Java, working together means exchanging information and technical expertise, as well as implementing joint community development programs. YUM Chairperson Olivia Reksodipoetro met with Dr. Bambang Purwantara to finalize the agreement.
