Malaumkarta Village in Sorong, West Papua, has natural attractiveness that needs conserving and even disseminating to wider public. “In Malaumkarta Village, my friends and I usually go to a bridge to enjoy the most charming dusk while observing birds and bats flying for food. I told the story through social media,” said Yunus Magablo when he was assigned to map content on his village through Facebook.
Yunus and 11 members of Malaumkarta Youth Generation Association (PGM) had a chance to take part in a Digital Content Training held by EcoNusa in collaboration with PGM. The 5-day training was held in Sorong, West Papua, on 22-25 March 2021.
There were series of activities for the participants. On the first two days, the participants and EcoNusa Communication Team and Alberth Yomo, a video facilitator, had class session on the use of digital channel, basic knowledge of digital content creation, graphic design practices and basic video making using smartphone. The activity was done at EcoNusa office at Sorong, West Papua.
The following two days, the partakers performed field practices at Malaumkarta Village. The activity focused on identification of content potentials and video making. There were various themes for content they could develop ranging from waste and environment issues, natural potentials from their villages such as traditional medicine and natural commodities to the issues on their cultural close ties to forests in which they and local community rely on their lives.
Pilemo Magablo, another participant, picked a story on the local community habit when they used air tali (rope water) in the jungle. “When we go to the jungle, we rarely bring any drink with us. We look for tree branches on the ground and we cut at one end. It will produce water we can drink,” he said telling the locals’ habit in the village.
This digital content training was expectedly to support the campaign effort for proposing customary forests at Malaumkarta Raya. To date, the PGM young people of Malaumkarta with EcoNusa support have conducted mapping of land and sea potentials at the customary land of Malaumkarta Raya. The mapping here involved six villages, namely Malaumkarta, Mibi, Sutolo, Suatut, Wenbulun and Malagufuk Villages.
Herlina Mobalen, the PGM treasurer and training participant, expected that this digital content training could help PGM promote their customary land so as not to be converted into palm oil estate. “The community has their lives here from sea and forests. We live from here. Our parents also survive here. We want peoples to know that our land is rich. We never let our land to be converted into palm oil as it was the case with other regions. After the training, we can make video without any other’s assistance so we can promote ourselves,” said Herlina optimistically.
Editor: Leo Wahyudi S & V Arnila Wulandani
