Regent of Seram Bagian Barat M. Yasin Payapo yelled the local slogan Saka Mese Nusa to build the spirit of School of Social Transformation (STS) participants at Morekau Village, Seram Barat District, Seram Bagian Barat Regency at Maluku Province on 20 February 2021. STS or commonly known as Village School was facilitated by EcoNusa Foundation in collaboration with Yogyakarta-based Insist (Indonesian Society for Social Transformation).
Saka Mese Nusa that means “Keep and Defend the Island” becomes mood booster to 36 young people taking part in Village School, a 18-day training on 8-25 February 2021. On the training, the youngsters learned various skills to build their own hamlets and local resilience. They have a “Making road while walking” slogan as their spirit.
The Village School was divided into three class with three subjects, namely Food crop cultivation, Biogas and Multifunction dryer. In the agriculture class, the participants learned to create fertilizer, pesticide and local microorganism (MOL) fertilizer from the existing materials in the village. In Biogas class, they learned to create biogas reactor ranging from collecting cow dungs, digging processing hole to stove and lamp installation. In multifunction dyer, they studied on how to measure and prepare iron structure to build multifunction drying house.
The Morekau House of Study activity was carried out as an attempt to build local resilience and self-reliance on food and energy by creating living applicable examples among the community. After training, the participants from 11 villages developed an action plan for each of their village.
During the activity, Minister Deputy of Agrarian Affairs and Spatial Planning/ National Land Agency (ATR/BPN) Surya Tjandra, jointly with EcoNusa Foundation CEO Bustar Maitar, Maluku Legislative’s Commission IV Chairman Samson Atapari and Regent of Seram Bagian Barat M. Yasin Payapo paid a visit to STS location at Morekau Village. They inspected the seeding house, production house, biogas reactor and drying house.
“With the existing skills, we hope we could gradually come out from inferiority,” said Regent Yasin. He expected that, in addition to 11 villages involved in this activity, the activity could attract more representatives from the existing villages in Seram Bagian Barat Regency.
EcoNusa collaboratively with Insist has organized a series of School of Eco Involvement activities through a workshop for village government on 4-6 February 2021. The village heads appointed two youngsters to represent their villages to participate in STS or Village School.
“Our friends initiative is not the first one. What is done now is very special and we can use it as lesson learned to us all. We try to encourage the cooperation with this community by employing empowerment bureau,” said Surya in front of the participants of Village School.
Surya underlined the importance of direct inspection to development in the eastern of Indonesia. The government should exist and this is the most concrete presence. “I would have no idea of the challenge if I did not come here. At the central government. I will report the inspection here so the central government could be more sensitive to such challenges and the lessons learned here could be developed to other regions,” said Surya heading to Taniwel District at Seram Bagian Barat Regency.
The meeting at Morekau has boosted the spirit of Village School participants. Let alone, the Regent and ATR/BPN Minister Deputy also expressed their supports. They will apply their knowledge and skill at their own village after the training. EcoNusa will also inform the results of the training to the Regent when it runs well.
Editor: Leo Wahyudi
