Did you know that young Indonesians consider a lack of environmental awareness, care and knowledge as being the primary barriers to environmental progress in Indonesia?
A 2018 study** indicated that young, environmentally conscious Indonesians see society itself, rather than the government or industry, responsible for combating environmental problems.
So that’s why it’s clear to us that societal engagement, education and access to information are the primary ways to further environmental and social efforts in the country right now. However, we see the current system of educating oneself about the issues and then volunteering to do something about it completely lacking.
When looking for volunteering opportunities in Indonesia, whether it be an online search or word-of-mouth, you currently cannot filter out opportunities that are closest to you. You cannot easily distinguish which programs are travel+volunteer, meaning you have to pay for your own flights and place to stay. You cannot filter out specific activities that match your skills or area of expertise. You also have no quick way of determining which organisations are reputable and credible. Finally, the big NGOs dominate the search results, with smaller, local organisations being much harder to find.
Therefore we believe that the difficulty of getting started with volunteering is something that needs to be addressed with urgency. This is why we think a centralized platform is so important!
We want people looking to learn more or act on environmental and social issues, to have a place to find accessible, easy to understand information in order to increase awareness and care. We also want people who are ready to volunteer to have a place where they can easily find volunteering opportunities perfectly suited to them.
Our volunteering page is launching soon! We aim to design a system so you'll able to filter volunteering programs based on location, interests, travel+volunteer vs only volunteer, type of skills/job that you want to contribute and more! We also want to give smaller NGOs support by including them in our page, that might otherwise not be found in a quick Google search.
We see it as our duty to increase the amount of volunteers in Indonesia in order to help protect its natural beauty for the generations to come. We hope that getting people that have previously refrained from volunteering to start, resulting in a snowball effect. Just like we have convinced many of our friends and family to start volunteering themselves by telling them about our positive experiences, we think this platform will do the same. We hope you will join us!
Co-contributor: Tobias Ehrlich
**In a 2018 study, researchers Lyn Parker, Kelsie Prabawa-Sear and Wahyu Kustiningsih surveyed 1000 high-school students enrolled in schools participating in Environmental Education (EE) programmes, with 90% self-identifying as “environmentalists”. Their study is published under the title “How young people in Indonesia see themselves as environmentalists: Identity, behaviour, perceptions and responsibility.”